The State of Cybersecurity 2024 report, released by Proton Dealership IT and Cybersecurity
The findings of a recent cybersecurity report show attacks against dealerships rose nearly 232 per cent in the month following back-to-back cyberattacks against a major DMS provider last summer.
The State of Cybersecurity 2024 report, released by Proton Dealership IT and Cybersecurity, which was acquired by Reynolds a few years ago, underlines that cyberattacks remain well above the levels seen before the CDK outage that saw thousands of Canadian dealerships impacted — and many more in the United States.
“Since then, Proton has seen more than double the number of dangerous attacks targeting dealerships, compared to what it was seeing before the incident,” said Proton in its report. As of September 19, (2024) attacks were up 155 per cent above the yearly average.”
The company said cyber attackers were active over the 2023 Christmas and the 2024 New Year holidays. Those attacks carried over into mid-February this year, with activity rising nearly 21 per cent from a month earlier. When comparing the data from December 2023 to March 2024 against the same length of time for March 2024 to June 2024, Proton said attacks were up 14.4 per cent more during the holiday period/start of the year — highlighting a more popular period for cyber attacks.
The company offered five minimum recommendations for dealers to better protect themselves against cyber threats and attacks:
- Train all dealership employees against social engineering and phishing scams;
- Use high quality email filtering and ensure cloud systems and remote access have MFA configured for all users;
- Use end point detection and response programs;
- Rely on professionals to monitor the dealership’s security tools 24 hours a day, seven days a week; and
- Have a recovery plan in place.
“Attacks are being targeted at dealerships every single day,” said Proton in its report.
Canadian auto dealer will be publishing its annual cybersecurity feature in the October issue of the magazine. Stay-tuned for more information.
