JCT600 vowing resilience in face of cyber attack

AM100 dealer group JCT600 has been forced to shut down critical IT systems after the business was targeted by cyber criminals.

The business told AM that on Wednesday 14 February, its IT security systems identified a potential security breach and, as a precautionary measure, immediately took some of its systems offline to enable it to undertake a full IT security review, in an effort to protect data.

It said that the precautionary step had caused some delays although this was limited to administration and did not affect the delivery of cars or stopping customers using the website as usual to browse for vehicles.

“Our IT team continues to assess the breach, but at this time there is no evidence that any customer data was accessed,” said JCT600 in a statement, “and we have full control of the IT systems.

“We will put all our servers back online as soon as our cyber specialists have completed their review and we are 100% satisfied that a threat no longer exists. In the meantime, we are continuing to take bookings and deliver vehicles, although there is a little inconvenience and minor delays, but our priority is to proceed with caution with all potential cyber threats.”

It added that it does not plan to make any further comment until it is in a position to provide an update.

JCT600 is the latest car retail group to fall foul of a cyber attack.

In December 2022, AM100 dealer group Arnold Clark was attacked, forcing the car retail giant to axe internet access to protect customer data.

Arnold Clark revealed that its external cyber security consultants had notified the business of “suspicious traffic on our network” late on December 23. Once confirmed by its own cyber team the decision was made to take down its network voluntarily as a measure to protect our customers’ data, systems and third-party partners.

Due to the disruption to its IT systems, Arnold Clark was unable to complete handovers of vehicles sold to customers before Christmas.

In October 2022, AM reported that Pendragon was understood to have received a $60 million (£53m) ransom demand. That attack came just two months after Holdcroft Motor Group saw some of its core systems "damaged beyond repair" by a cyber attack.