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Ford Dealers In North America Back Online As CDK Outage Ends

Late last month, CDK Global – which serves close to 15,000 automotive dealerships in the U.S. – shut down most of its systems following a cyberattack that occurred early one Wednesday morning. The company then set out to determine the scope of the damage from that attack, as well as figure out how to patch any holes that might be present in its software. However, that process hit a bit of a snag the very next day when CDK brought its systems back online, only to experience a second cyberattack. As one might imagine, this downtime has had a big impact on many Ford dealers, but it seems as if things are finally getting back to normal.

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“We are ahead of the anticipated schedule, and as of this morning, substantially all dealer connections are live on the Dealer Management System,” CDK told Automotive News in a statement. As of now, most of CDK’s customers are back online, roughly two weeks after the first cyberattack, which is a couple of days earlier than expected – great news for Ford dealers impacted by the outage.

As Ford Authority previously reported, CDK originally anticipated coming up with a workaround for the issues stemming from its cyberattack in a day or two, but later pushed that back to last Sunday, and then, later this week.  The company tested out its systems by adding a small handful of dealers back online at first, and now, it seems as if things are once again working as they should.

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Regardless, a number of Ford dealers have been impacted by the fallout from this cyberattack, which includes Village Ford in Dearborn, Michigan. That store sold around 100 vehicles in one week following the attack, though those transactions were in a bit of a limbo since CDK generates the paperwork needed to pass them on to the new owners. A group of hackers believed to be based in eastern Europe claimed responsibility for these acts, and were demanding millions of dollars in ransom money in exchange for halting its attacks, though it remains unclear if CDK did in fact pay that ransom.

We’ll have more on this cyberattack soon, so be sure and subscribe to Ford Authority for 24/7 Ford news coverage.

Brett's lost track of all the Fords he's owned over the years and how much he's spent modifying them, but his current money pits include an S550 Mustang and 13th gen F-150.

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