The Expert Podcast

Okay, so here's another industry that's having a momentous event with cyber attacks, and this happens to be the automotive dealership industry. In the automotive professional sales industry, the way it's working is that cyber hackers are targeting car dealerships for a number of reasons, and according to reports, there is a rise in dealership cyber attacks.

90% of automotive retailers are getting serious about their dealership cyber security plans, yet they are still succumbing to data breaches at an alarming rate. 17% of dealers experienced an attack in the last year, despite 53% being confident in their current protection.

And it's worse because, as of now, according to the Federal Trade Commission, if you are a car dealership and you have a data security breach, you have to report it no later than 30 days after the discovery. It's part of the FTC's safeguards rule that requires non-banking financial institutions to notify the agency, and here's why.

Car dealerships first of all have lots of customer data they have names driver's licensees date of birth social security numbers even for people who don't finance a vehicle many times you have a Social Security number you also have vehicle information about the transaction the VIN number the license plate number registration information signatures in addition there's large volumes of data you know dealerships may talk to a thousand people a month not only buyers but service customers sales leads inquiries people that come in the showroom and all of them sometimes share private information many times just to test drive a car you have to show your ID and get a copy of your driver's license if a hacker gets into that system there's a treasure Trove of data that can be used for um things like ransomware things like identity theft and car dealerships are a big Target according to this article like I said it is an alarming rate of dealers that are being targeted hackers as you know use data for certain reasons the Cyber criminals are evolving their methods to steal data and uh user and client data and car dealerships are a primary target and they're trying out some of their new sophisticated methods on card dealerships a lot of times car dealerships are more customer facing which makes it more easy for human error to be bypassed.

Here's why if you're a car dealership you want to sell cars somebody calls up you want to be very aggressive and very proactive on trying to communicate with that potential customer you may give out more information you may let them use your Wi-Fi there's a lot of ways they can get in we heard of a dealership a couple months ago that had a hacker get in through their uh WiFi of of their security camera so if your car dealership new or used be aware that you have certain reporting requirements according to the FTC and this just came out a couple days ago October 27th this a new thing you have to report if you have a breach and if as of now 70 17% of dealers had a breach then you have to report you can prevent these by having active monitoring or active cyber Insurance you can prevent it by using best practices that are often required by your insurance either way don't just rely on your it Department many times the IT department very well- meaning very um good at the programming and the marketing side of it there's certain types of evolving cuttingedge cyber attacks that may not be known by even the most advanced IT person even insurance companies see new hacks all the time but by having an insurer putting active monitoring on your system they can see the new threats that are coming before they get to your dealership they can see them when they attack other businesses and they can warn you in advance look the hackers are now doing this here's how to prevent it in your store so either way contact your broker or contact a good insurance agent for commercial lines to make sure that not only do you have cyber you don't just have a $50,000 Rider on your existing liability policy you have a multi-million dollar cyber security insurance policy they're relatively inexpensive because a rider on your existing liability policy it's going to have a low limit it's going to have a lot of exclusions it's not going to have active monitoring a standalone separate cyber policy will have much higher limits you can also put an umbrella over it and it'll have active monitoring of your system to prevent the hack from happening in the first place.