Last week, CDK Global, a market leader in car dealership software, was hit by a ransomware attack that turned off their primary system. The attack impacted over 40% of car dealerships in North America and thousands more worldwide, potentially reducing new car sales by about 100,000 vehicles in June.
100,000 unsold cars means upwards of $4.5 billion in lost economic activity.
The massive dollar cost of a service outage in a relatively niche software sector underscores a critical message: Continuity of service matters, and even generally stable, legacy products are vulnerable. Large enterprise products are, in fact, uniquely at risk because they are enticing targets for cyber attacks and their mature infrastructure increases the likelihood of having at least one unaddressed vulnerability.
Despite valid concerns about enterprise products' ability to secure their software platforms, there may be better solutions than rushing to replace legacy systems. Mature products offer unique economies of scale, feature sets, and support capabilities. For many businesses, replacing these systems is not viable or cost-efficient.
With a low-code application platform, a business can deploy scaled-down applications replicating critical functionality, data, and automation, allowing operations to continue even if the primary system goes down. Low code also enables enterprises to extend their core software tools with additional features, fixes, and automation, ensuring greater flexibility and resilience.
Although CDK was limited to the automotive industry, major enterprise products like CRMs (HubSpot, Salesforce), ERPs (SAP, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics), and project management tools (Jira, Confluence) are similarly vulnerable.
Protecting your business doesn’t mean replacing keystone tools. With a low-code technical partner, you can preserve the core functions that keep your operation moving forward, even in a crisis.
If you’re ready to protect your business's continuity no matter what happens, book a meeting with Slingr here.
