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Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

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Re: Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

#101

Post by itsoktocry »

cogman10 wrote: post #63
AlexandrB wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All that land they own can be used for productive economic activity or housing. No it can't. You still need places where cars can be repaired as well as storage for parts/cars inventory. The only way you reclaim some land is if service gets worse. Edit: For example, Tesla sells direct to consumers but there's still a Tesla "showroom" in my town. In terms of footprint/appearance it's basically a dealership. So where…

> No it can't. You still need places where cars can be repaired as well as storage for parts/cars inventory. The only way you reclaim some land is if service gets worse. You probably aren't going to have 10 Ford dealerships in town all selling the same models of cars. That's where the space savings comes in. As for parts/service, that also gets more streamlined as you aren't likely to have the audi/ford/dodge dealers…

>You probably aren't going to have 10 Ford dealerships in town all selling the same models of cars. That's where the space savings comes in.

So do we want competition, or not?

Re: Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

#102

Post by hubraumhugo »

n4r9 wrote: post #13

This is what happens when a single player (CDK Global) has massive market share (90% when measured by number of vehicles sold [0] --- EDIT: this is actually the combined market share of CDK + Reynolds, who have a non-compete agreement ---). The entire industry becomes fragile to product issues and/or malicious attacks. Anti-trust is important. [0] https://casetext.com/case/loop-llc-v-cdk-global-llc-in-re-de...

My entrepreneurial mind immediately thinks: Let's create a better solution to revolutionize this industry and make the old, expensive incumbents obsolete. We can drive to the affected car dealers and migrate them one by one.

Of course, I'm not going to do it and it's probably extremely hard :)

Re: Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

#103

Post by [deleted] »

tonymet wrote: post #79

In studying voting systems I’ve come to respect paper-based logs along the same quality parameters as databases. Resiliency, scalability, backup, readability, schema-flexibility , onboarding, power-efficiency are all very good with paper. So many of us were quick to move paper-based systems (voting, orders, kiosks, parking meters, journals, requests, etc) over to computers – without accounting for the e2e cost and fl…

[deleted]

Re: Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

#104

Post by ethbr1 »

quercusa wrote: post #83
ethbr1 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there anything relevant to recovery / graceful functional degradation in SoC2? If not, this feels like an obvious match there. E.g. "Company has a defined and demonstrated process by which they can (a) offer degraded but limited functionality in the event of full system outage & (b) accept data updates via a backup method, until system restoration." Sure would have helped with Change Healthcare...

I think you have to have a tabletop exercise once a year. So all good, right?

I mean, better than not. Everytime I see something basic in a standard, it makes me realize there were businesses out there who weren't doing anything of the sort.

Re: Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

#105

Post by itsoktocry »

cogman10 wrote: post #77
itsoktocry wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Consumers should have the option to purchase directly from the manufacturer. They should have the option , sure. But what difference do you think this makes in reality? The process ends up being the similar. > but I admire the business model of buying directly from Tesla A lot of people don't want to buy a $40,000+ item online. Tesla understands this, which is why they opened "showrooms" to have real people walk yo…

> But what difference do you think this makes in reality? The process ends up being the similar. The difference is the price listed is the price you pay. There's not an environment where the dealer is injecting whatever BS fee or piss poor financing they can to milk out every extra cent from the customer. The manufacture is incentivized to sell these cars at the advertised price.

>The difference is the price listed is the price you pay. There's not an environment where the dealer is injecting whatever BS fee or piss poor financing they can to milk out every extra cent from the customer.

What does the "advertised price" mean, when companies like Tesla can, and do, change it on a whim? Is that really better?

No one is stopping you from walking into a dealership and paying sticker/MSRP.

Re: Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

#106

Post by numbsafari »

MangoCoffee wrote: post #93
n4r9 wrote: post #13

This is what happens when a single player (CDK Global) has massive market share (90% when measured by number of vehicles sold [0] --- EDIT: this is actually the combined market share of CDK + Reynolds, who have a non-compete agreement ---). The entire industry becomes fragile to product issues and/or malicious attacks. Anti-trust is important. [0] https://casetext.com/case/loop-llc-v-cdk-global-llc-in-re-de...

why didn't Silicon Valley try to disrupt this market?

Seems to me like now is a good time to raise some money around this particular issue.

Re: Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

#107

Post by metadat »

tonymet wrote: post #79

In studying voting systems I’ve come to respect paper-based logs along the same quality parameters as databases. Resiliency, scalability, backup, readability, schema-flexibility , onboarding, power-efficiency are all very good with paper. So many of us were quick to move paper-based systems (voting, orders, kiosks, parking meters, journals, requests, etc) over to computers – without accounting for the e2e cost and fl…

How does the backup aspect work for paper? Scanning?

Otherwise paper is quite fragile and susceptible to combustion.

What if voting was all done via paper and you could later view the scan of your ballot as it existed at the time of count? Unfortunately there could still be funny business on the backend.

Re: Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

#108

Post by jimt1234 »

shagie wrote: post #52

One of the reports of this I heard was on Marketplace the other day... and the part that made me chuckle was on cursive. Pen and paper, but please no cursive: Widespread cyberattack sends car dealers back to 20th century - https://www.marketplace.org/2024/06/21/cdk-global-hack-softw... > Car dealers are a pretty big part of this economy, doing some $1.2 trillion in sales last year, according to the National Automobil…

Sorta-related: manual-transmission cars. About a year ago, my girlfriend found a VW Jetta that she liked on the BMW lot with a manual-transmission. She offered the dealership about 60% of what they were asking. The dealer strongly rejected the offer, even laughed at it. My GF and I walked away. The dealer called back a few days and accepted her original offer. They were never gonna sell that car with the manual-transmission and they knew it. The only downside is that she's never gonna be able to re-sell the car, either.

Re: Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

#109

Post by ryanmccullagh »

neilv wrote: post #19
ryanmccullagh wrote: post #6

I would bet that a developer knew of the security issues, but was vetoed by Product.

The usual case for software development the last decade is developers who don't fully understand what they're doing, and are mostly focused on resume-driven-development (RDD) and looking good in Agile sprint standups. Noteworthy exceptions: FAANG promotion bid orientation, and VC growth startup alignment towards shipping something to look like growth towards exit. In a small minority of cases, you have developers who…

Not getting time to do security because we need to ship v1 is a decision called by Product

Re: Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

#110

Post by mywittyname »

SoftTalker wrote: post #44
toomuchtodo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My hot take is auto dealers are a notoriously painful enterprise sales cycle due to network effects aka "good 'ol boys" club (anecdotally from folks in tech who have to deal in this industry).

Many are also not tech-savvy. Many dealerships are inherited within a family that has owned them since the 1950s if not longer. They are cash cows for the owners and there's little motivation to try new things. When they are forced to, like when internet sales and marketing became a thing they had to deal with, they just go with the same system that all their fellow dealers are using.

There also isn't space to grow. It's not like running a dealership with hyper efficiency is going to lead to being able to open another dealership. The market is largely saturated and in the rare event that an existing dealership comes for sale, you'll be competing with massive PE-backed conglomerates that can pay nonsense prices for them.
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