By Joel Reichenberger, Progressive Farmer Senior Editor
CRANBERRY TOWNSHIP, PA — Good news came on June 27 to the 21st Century Equipment dealership group, about 10 days after a cyberattack hit it and affected its customers.
The 26-dealer chain that sells and services John Deere equipment in eastern Colorado, western Nebraska and southeast Wyoming, had trouble starting around June 18. At first, the company’s computer systems weren’t working as expected. Things got worse the next day and were completely offline by the end of the week before finally coming back late this week.
“We’re totally back,” said Owen Palm, president and CEO of 21st Century.
The problem was part of a North American outage of services of CDK Global, the result of a ransomware cyberattack demanding millions of dollars against the company, which provides backend support for more than 15,000 auto dealerships across North America. Car dealerships in both the U.S. and Canada were hit hard by the outage. A J.D. Power estimate predicted new car sales numbers in the U.S. could be off by 100,000 in June compared with the same period last year, more than a 7% drop in volume.
FARM EQUIPMENT DEALERS AFFECTED
The damage went beyond automobile lots, and many farm equipment dealers found themselves struggling when the systems went down last week.
For automobile dealerships, the CDK system keeps customer records and takes care of much of the paperwork involved in the business, ranging from dealing with vehicle sales, to scheduling repairs, to handling payroll. Farm equipment dealers felt the biggest pinch in the parts department where systems that one day were automated suddenly weren’t.
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