AutoCanada Cyber Attack Disrupts Operations at Large Canadian Auto Dealership
AutoCanada, one of the largest automobile dealership groups in Canada, disclosed that it recently fell victim to a cyberattack that impacted the company’s internal IT infrastructure. The Cyber attack occurred last Sunday and prompted the company to take immediate action to secure its networks and investigate the full scope of the incident.
In a statement, AutoCanada confirmed that external cybersecurity experts have been hired to assist with containment, remediation, and determining the exact nature and impact of the attack. As the investigation remains ongoing, details regarding the type of ransomware used or if any customer, employee, or supplier data was accessed are still unknown.
AutoCanada Cyber Attack May Lead to Service Disruptions
According to AutoCanada, while business operations continue, the ransomware incident has the potential to cause disruptions until all affected IT systems are fully restored. As a major automotive retailer with over 66 franchised dealerships across Canada and the United States, any prolonged network outages or data breaches could significantly hinder the company’s day-to-day operations.
“The CDK outage disrupted operations resulting in lost sales and profits, OEM inventory grew across the industry causing higher days supply in key brands and impacting floorplan costs, and rising unemployment combined with falling GDP in a still elevated rate environment perpetuated consumer uncertainty” says Paul Antony, AutoCanada’s Chairman
At this time, no major ransomware groups have claimed responsibility for the attack on AutoCanada. However, the company is still in the early stages of understanding the full technical details and consequences of the security breach.
Earlier CDK Global Outage Also Impacted Dealerships
AutoCanada’s disclosure of the ransomware attack came alongside the release of its second quarter 2024 financial results. As Paul Antony, Chairman of AutoCanada, noted in the report, “several headwinds during the second quarter, which substantially affected our performance.”
This includes disruptions caused by the massive outage at third-party vendor CDK Global due to a BlackSuit ransomware infection in June. According to AutoCanada, the CDK outage lasted from June 19th until July 1st, though the complete recovery, validation and cleanup of impacted systems stretched into the latter part of the month.
The combination of these cyber incidents has undoubtedly placed significant strain on AutoCanada’s IT infrastructure and business operations. Looking ahead, the company will continue working with experts to shut down the ransomware threat, restore normal services, and evaluate network security improvements. This includes determining if any customer data was stolen during the attack that could enable future phishing or fraud.
With sensitive business and personal information at risk, AutoCanada now faces the challenging process ofbolstering its cyber defenses and rebuilding violated systems. The long-term impact will also depend on whether negotations with the ransomware operators are pursued and how smoothly affected areas can be restored. Only through a thorough post-intrusion analysis will proper remediations take shape to prevent similar disruptive ransomware attacks down the road.
