Ransomware attacks make dealership cyber insurance more expensive, complicated

In October, as Smith Automotive Group was in the process of renewing its cyber insurance policy, the group’s controller got an email from CFO Karen Kulinich asking her to wire $190,000 from a specific account.

The invoice and the wording of the email looked legitimate, like something Kulinich would have written. Only Kulinich didn’t send the email. She was at a lunch meeting and had communicated that she would be unavailable for a couple of hours. When Kulinich later checked her phone, she said, “that’s when both of us just froze.”

“She was one click away from sending $190,000,” Kulinich said.

The incident prompted the four-store Nissan group in Georgia to talk about adopting multifactor authentication.