A cyber outage at a major retail software provider for automobile dealers entered its third consecutive day on Friday, delaying car sales throughout North America, the affected companies said. The software provider, CDK, said there was no end in sight.
“The CDK outage is impacting automotive dealerships across the US and Canada, including a portion of BMW Group dealers,” a spokesperson for BMW North America told Reuters.
CDK, which provides different kinds of software to car dealerships, said it experienced another cyber incident on Wednesday and proactively shut down most of its systems, but was working to reinstate its services and get dealers’ businesses back to normal soon. On Thursday, CDK sent a letter to customers stating that it “did not have an estimated time frame for resolution”.
It did not disclose the number of affected dealerships in its statement. But according to its website, CDK works with more than 15,000 retail locations across North America. Representatives for major car companies including Ford, Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz confirmed to Bloomberg that they were working with dealerships affected by the outage.
“Dealers are very committed to protecting their customer information and are actively seeking information from CDK to determine the nature and scope of the cyber incident so they can respond appropriately,” the National Automobile Dealers Association said. The privately owned vehicle dealer Holman also said the outage had affected its phone system.
The investment firm Brookfield Business Partners bought CDK in April 2022 for $6.41bn in a cash deal, taking the last major publicly traded provider of software to auto dealers and manufacturers private.