Retail Forum Dealer Discussions - S8

STRATEGIES FOR DETERRING RELENTLESS
AND WELL-FUNDED CYBERCRIMINALS
Cybersecurity expert Erik Nachbahr has a sobering message
for car dealers both large and small: Well-funded
and highly organized cybercriminals are relentlessly targeting
dealerships.
" The reality is that any size dealership is vulnerable, " says
Nachbahr, president of Helion Technologies. " Without exaggeration,
probably 100% of dealers have been attacked in
some way, many of them successfully - and a lot of them
don't even know about it. "
Nachbahr made his remarks during a Retail Forum: Dealer
Discussions symposium about cybersecurity.
One chief takeaway is that
dealerships generally don't invest in
good cybersecurity. Nor do they train
employees how to avoid inadvertently
creating security breaches by, say,
clicking on web links in scam emails.
Moreover, poor security practices
inflict more than just financial losses
for dealerships and customers. They
also expose dealerships to expensive
lawsuits if they didn't have reasonable
security measures established and severely
tarnish their reputations.
information is easier to recover if stolen, explains Mahesh
Shah, chief product and technology officer at CDK Global.
" We call it limiting the blast radius, " he says.
Shah also says cybersecurity insurance is becoming
more popular. One benefit is constant automated risk
assessments.
" Some insurers are more sophisticated and also will do
some basic checks on vendors as well, " he notes. " But
they will look at risk scores and pinpoint areas of potential
risk so that you have something to constantly weigh
yourself against and look at how you
can improve. "
" People don't want
to do business with
dealerships that don't
protect their data. "
Erik Nachbahr
Helion
Technologies
Another consideration: Alf says that
dealers who haven't already done so
will need to hire qualified cybersecurity
directors.
" Most dealerships don't have anyone
who understands IT or any type of
admin where they can properly segment
and protect the network - keep
devices like your smart TVs and your
phone systems all on their own virtual networks, "
he says.
" People don't want to do business with dealerships that
don't protect their data, " he says.
So what can dealers do to deter cyberthieves?
Implementing multi-factor authentication technology
is a good start, says Erik Day, CFO of Miami-based Warren
Henry Auto Group. The group also created sub-networks
for various dealership devices, which can help limit how far
cybercriminals can penetrate a dealer's operations, compared
to having everything on one network.
Michael Alf, general manager of Illinois-based St. Charles
Toyota, points out that a recent Federal Trade Commission
ruling requires financial institutions and other organizations
- including dealerships - to use multi-factor authentication
to access customer financial data.
" My main managers use YubiKey, which is the gold standard
for multi-factor authentication, " he says.
Alf also notes that it's important for dealers to know whether
their vendors use robust multi-factor authentication.
Along with segmenting networks, dealerships also
should establish multiple data backups so this critical
8
Dean Evans, executive vice-president of Cars.com,
notes that going forward, dealers will have to balance
security protocols with consumer demands for a
seamless digital sales experience, which requires collecting
sensitive data in order to make the sales process
faster and more convenient.
" We have more need for a better customer experience,
and that means a more data-rich experience, " he explains.
" Yet data-rich also is more risky. And so that's what we're
trying to fine-line all the time. "
In addition, it will be " critically important " for dealers
to be transparent with customers and tell them who has
access to their data and how it might be used, Shah says.
At the end of the day, it's all about the consumer experience,
Day emphasizes.
" The consumer is going to dictate where we need to take
our industry, " he says. " So we need to work together as
a collective vertical to provide that inter-operability and
remove all the friction, but at the same time provide both
security and privacy. Obviously, it's a very daunting task. "
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