Colorado car dealerships struggle with service and sales during CDK cyber incident

DENVER (KDVR) – A company that provides software for sales and service at thousands of car dealerships across the country was apparently hacked and shut down, causing problems for Colorado dealerships.

It’s just the latest event that Colorado retailers must respond to.

“Every day you have to worry about whether the power is on in the store, whether there is going to be a hailstorm or something else?” says John Bowell, owner of Shoreline Buick GMC.

While local auto dealerships are still dealing with the damage from a recent hailstorm, some of them are grappling with a new problem. CDK Global, the company that supplies software to many auto dealerships, told FOX31 that the company is actively investigating a cyber incident.

“Late in the evening of June 19, we experienced another cyber incident and proactively shut down most of our systems. In collaboration with external experts, we are assessing the impact and providing regular updates to our customers,” said a CDK spokesperson.

Local dealers like Bowell and Dan Johnson of Len Lyle Chevrolet told FOX31 they were already feeling the impact yesterday morning.

“The service department got there first and of course couldn’t open the computer and type anything in to get information about the cars and the people who brought them in for service,” Bowell said.

“It’s basically the backbone of any dealership,” says Matthew Groves, CEO of the Colorado Automobile Dealers Association. “It stores all your contacts. It does most of your financial work. It’s even used in the shop. So if your technology backbone goes down, the dealership can’t run its business.”

In order to continue serving customers, local retailers resorted to old tactics.

“We just had to start handwriting tickets and doing things like that and couldn’t look at the history of anything,” Bowell said.

During the holiday on Wednesday, CADA stepped in to help dealers complete sales.

“Fortunately, we’re one of the states that has a dealership, and I’ve been running around to dealerships and handing out paper contracts to those who can use them,” Groves said. “We’re just trying to get back to the way we sold cars 20 years ago.”

Local dealers are unsure when things will return to normal, but stress that for now they will continue to sell and service cars, with or without the latest technology.

“We are continuing business as usual. It may take a little longer, but we are continuing to perform auto maintenance, sell parts and do business as usual as best we can,” said Dan Johnson, general manager of Len Lyall Chevrolet.

“We will protect whatever we can at our dealer level,” Bowell said.