F&I and Showroom, July 2016

www fi magazine com 23 F I and Showroom July 2016 Ranked 1 in Dealer Satisfaction Two Years in a Row We congratulate Autosoft on being recognized as one of the best of the best by the people to whom their services count the most the dealer community DrivingSales CEO and Founder Jared Hamilton See why Autosoft is the two time consecutive winner of the Highest Rated DMS award and request a demo at www autosoftdms com ranked one 2016 Autosoft All Rights Reserved AS16 0137 these applications when an employee leaves the dealership Thats why revoking credentials should be part of your employee exit strategy Hey its a good first step to protecting your most prized asset your data ABOUT THE AUTHOR David Nathanson is chief consulting officer and head of the retail advisory practice at motormindz a global automotive professional services and technology company Email David at david nathanson@ bobit com tiple web applications only grows with the number of individuals a dealership employs The good news is that many of these applications utilized by dealerships are password protected The bad news is each application requires a logon and password credential for each employee And unfortunately many dealers fail to cut off access to responsible for it is critical you take action now A BIGGER THREAT There is a bigger threat however See when it comes to securing their data most dealers focus on what is flowing in and out of their DMS why the factory wants their data and which vendors are connecting to their systems What they overlook is the threat posed by the very people they employ individuals who use the web to connect to the DMS and the very applications used to run the dealership And just think about how theyre making those connections Are they using the same devices they use to run personal applications surf the web and receive and open unscreened junk mail and files that might contain viruses and malware intended to infiltrate networks Unless the activities taking place on those personal devices are monitored the dealerships exposure to hacking fraud and extortion is multiplied exponentially And yes we see businesses being hacked and their data hijacked on a weekly basis In some cases these hackers lock out the business until a ransom is paid And if you think your dealership doesnt really use web applications think again At this years NADA Convention Expo I asked a group of dealers how many applications they thought were being accessed at their dealerships All of them replied with a range of between six and 10 applications Well according to Brady Ferron the average dealership juggles around 42 different online destinations some dealer rooftops handling more than 60 Ferron is looking to address many of the data security issues dealers are facing as CEO of DealerHQ and he had recently completed an inventory of applications used in several dealerships when I shared with him my conversation with that group of dealers See what many dealers overlook is their connections to social media sites like Facebook Twitter LinkedIn and Instagram Add in personal applications email games reference tools and smartphones and its easy to see how these access points have grown over the years And the risk from mul