Ann: Pause in Trading, page-11

This is an extract of a longer article to be in 'The Australian' tomorrow:

"...The auto trader said the outage was restricting its ability to trade within certain parts of its business in some operating locations across Australia and New Zealand.

“Eagers Automotive apologises to customers for any inconvenience,” a company spokesman said.

Eagers has more than 300 dealerships across Australia, in all states and territories, as well as in New Zealand and owns Australia’s largest national fixed price pre-owned automotive business, easyauto123.

The company would hold a large amount of data due to the size of its operations, its spread of dealerships across Australia and its handling of the biggest car brands...

...

A spokesman for Eagers on Wednesday said an accelerated investigation of the company’s IT systems is underway to determine the extent of the cyber incident, and to ensure customer and employee information remains safeguarded.

“The company is investigating rapidly and, to this point, has not found any access to or misuse of customer or employee information. As part of our cyber security protocols, external incident response experts have been appointed to support the ongoing investigation and response.”

“Maintaining the security and privacy of our customers’ data and our employees’ data is our highest priority and all efforts of the business are now focused on safely restoring our systems.

“At this stage, customers do not need to do anything but we ask them to remain vigilant of any suspicious activity..."