North American car dealerships revert to pen and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

Car dealerships in North America continue to wrestle with major disruptions that started last month with cyberattacks on a software company used widely in the auto retail sales sector. CDK Global, a company that provides software for thousands of auto dealers in the U.S. and Canada, was hit by back-to-back cyberattacks. That led to an outage that has continued to impact operations. For prospective car buyers, that meant delays at dealerships or vehicle orders written up by hand. There's no immediate end in sight, with CDK saying it expects the restoration process to take “several days” to complete. “It's just a few more steps and a little bit more time. But we do have workarounds for everything. We're doing contracts by hand. There's guys that work with us that have never submitted anything except electronically. And there's some guys who did it before who know how to do everything by hand,” said John Crane of Hawk Auto Group, a Westmont, Illinois-based dealership operator that uses CDK. “So, we're taking that knowledge of the people, like I said, who got maybe a little more experience and going back to the basics and getting things done and trying to not let it affect our customers too much.” Hawk Auto Group has 11 retail locations and two parts warehouses. It sells 17 brands– everything from Aston Martin to Volkswagen. All but one of its locations is in Illinois with the exception of a Hawk dealership in suburban Pittsburgh. Crane said Hawk Auto Group does nearly $1 billion in sales per year. “It'll be different for a little while, but we start to appreciate how much the computers make our lives easier, too,” he said. This article was provided by The Associated Press.