Massive outage at car dealership could be resolved by July 4th

Car dealerships hit by outages following two cyberattacks against CDK Global in June may finally be able to use their systems again this week, as the company says it aims to get dealerships back online by July 4.

“We are continuing our phased approach to the restoration process and are quickly getting dealers on board with the dealer management system (DMS),” CDK Global spokeswoman Lisa Finney said in a statement to On the edge. “We anticipate that all dealer connections will be available on Wednesday, July 3rd or the morning of Thursday, July 4th. Our customer service channels have also been restored and customers can call, chat or send eCases if they need assistance.”

CDK Global provides software to nearly 15,000 auto dealerships and, following two cyberattacks on June 19 and 20, proactively shut down its systems. As a result, some dealerships, which rely on CDK Global’s software for things like tracking car sales and scheduling maintenance, have had to resort to using pen and paper.

CDK Global has already brought “two small groups of dealers” and “one large group of publicly traded dealers” back live in its DMS, according to a statement given to CBS MoneyWatch.