Joey Z. LOVES to sell cars. Bing Bang Boom, what’s it gonna take to put you into this sweet, sweet ride? Joey truly does mean well and yes, he’s got a knack of closing those deals. Joey also loves cruising the interwebs during his shift, he’s got prospects to find, bank rates to investigate, and E-Bay surfing to do to fuel his antique pop-top collection hobby. Some days he’s practically glued to his beat up office chair, clicking away, and getting more screen time than a pre-teen.
Wednesday’s tend to be slow at the dealership, but Joey shows up with a positive can-do attitude ready to make some deals. On one fateful Wednesday, Joey rolled up with his Stanley mug in hand. He was ready to down some caffeine, he was ready to follow up with some prospects, he was ready to surf for more pop-tops. Sitting down in the creaky chair, he logged in and got to work. After about 20 minutes, an intriguing email popped up. That email would change the trajectory of that slow Wednesday. The email claimed to be from Pauly P, the Pop-Top legend. Pauly P was THE MAN. If you needed a 1959 Pull Tab from a Sprite can, you went to Paully P. Joey Z, excited beyond belief, clicked the email to dig deeper. The alleged sender was offering an unbelievable deal, and if anyone knew a good deal, it was Joey Z. He read the email with a huge smile on his face, pulled out his Mastercard and clicked the Buy NOW link. “This was the day” he thought, the day that Joey could level up his collection. But the dark lords of the internets had a completely different plan in mind. You see, the email was forged by some cyber-thug knowing that they could trick Joey Z into clicking that link.
As Joey leaned back in his creaking chair, his PC started to download software and auto-install. The machine rebooted itself and locked him out of his account. “Oh FUDGE!” Joey Z began to panic. What had he done? Had his innocent quest for a few hard to find pop-tops just cost him his job? This was not good. He finally had to go and find Camden, the dealership IT guy. Camden was always hard to find. He was either plugging in or unplugging network cables in some dark closet or wearing gigantic headphones while calling in air-strikes to his Call of Duty teammates in Pakistan. Joey Z finally connected with Camden who seemed really un-enthused about Joey’s IT problem, but agreed to go and “Ummmmm, take a look, I guess.” Cameron strolled over to Joey’s desk, attempted to login and realized that he too was locked out. It didn’t end there. All kinds of heads started to pop up from their dealership cubicles also locked out of their machines. The entire dealership was one by one, locked out of their network. As the hackers dug deeper and deeper into the network, they wreaked havoc. The owners started to freak out. One of them received a message on the screen of his PC. The message threatened to erase all data on all machines, including customer data, prospect data, financial information, and even Cameron’s Call of Duty data.
The dealership and its data was being held hostage. The hackers threatened that if the dealership didn’t wire them 2.5 Million dollars within 24 hours that they would destroy the data, which would cripple the dealership even more. “Son of a Shish Kabob!!!” the owner exclaimed. “Cameron, how in H E Double Hockey Sticks did this happen?” Cameron, getting a little nervous to lose his once cushy job only had this wisdomful nugget to say “Ummmmm, I’m not really sure.”
Folks, this happens WAY more than it should. Advanced Systems Solutions was called in to this particular dealership that same day and sprang into action. By the end of the day, we were able to access some backup hard-drives that the dealership had in the cloud and take back control of the network. Much of this could have been avoided if all of the machines were up to date on their software AND if the IT team had been proactive in keeping the switches, WiFi, servers, and other vital components up to date and safeguarded. One of the main lessons to learn from this true story is that your team members also need to be trained in IT safety. Joey Z should have dug a bit deeper into that email from “Paully P” before clicking anything. The email was riddled with goofy URLs and typos.
As hackers get more and more sophisticated, it’s even more critical that you have a team like the ASSI team watching your network, keeping you safe, and proactively keeping your dealership up to date. We work with several dealerships throughout Central Florida and would love the opportunity to spend some time with your team to discuss how ASSI can help protect your business. Call us today: (407) 414-6626. Relax, we’re on IT.
Update on Cameron
Cameron has found a new dream job plugging and unplugging wires for the local Cable Company. We wish him well and of course, good luck fighting off the evil forces on Call of Duty.
