Dealership IT Management That Covers the Lot Too
Your dealer management system (DMS) runs the store, the FTC Safeguards Rule watches your paperwork, and your inventory sits outside all night. Most IT companies handle the first item and have never heard of the other two. We manage all three, from down the road, not from Denver.
Free Dealership IT & Lot Security Assessment
Book a 30-minute call, then we schedule the on-site walkthrough. You get a written report either way, no obligation.
Dealers Learned This the Hard Way in June 2024
When CDK Global went down on June 19, 2024, dealers across the country found out what their store looks like without its software. The outage timelines and dollar figures below come from dealer groups' own SEC filings and from Anderson Economic Group. The vendor count is CDK's own, and the reporting deadline is the FTC rule.
~15,000
dealer locations CDK says it serves. When it went down, there was no second DMS to fail over to
~3 weeks
before one group had all CDK functions restored, and its bolt-on integrations trailed for weeks after that
$1.02B
Anderson Economic Group's estimate of direct losses to franchised dealers over three weeks
30 days
to notify the FTC after you discover unencrypted data on 500+ consumers was taken
The lesson was not "pick a better vendor." There was no second DMS to switch to. What separated the stores that kept selling was how fast they cut their own network off from CDK and how well they could run on paper while they waited. That is a store-side job. It is our job.
What the Free Assessment Covers
One visit, four hard looks, and a written report you keep whether or not you hire us.
FTC Safeguards Gap Review
We walk your store against the rule's actual named controls: Qualified Individual, access controls, encryption, multi-factor authentication (an extra login step so a stolen password alone can't get in), staff training, vendor oversight, and the rest. You see exactly which boxes you already tick and which ones would embarrass you in an audit.
DMS Dependency and Outage Readiness
What happens to your store the morning your DMS vendor goes dark? We map what depends on it, what your own backups actually cover, and what a practiced paper-and-phone day would look like, so an outage is a bad week instead of a lost month.
Lot Camera and Plate-Recognition Walkthrough
We walk the lot at the spots where losses actually happen: entries and exits, the back rows, the key cabinet, the service drive. You get a camera and license plate recognition (LPR) layout that produces usable evidence, with footage recorded on hardware you own, no per-camera cloud-storage subscription.
Written Report, Plain English
Findings, priorities, and what each fix roughly involves, written so your general manager and your office manager both understand it. No jargon, no scare tactics, and no obligation to buy anything.
The Network and the Lot, One Contract
Dealership IT companies do not touch cameras. Camera companies will not go near the network those cameras ride on. So when footage drops or a camera goes offline the week you need it, two vendors point at each other while you eat the loss. We install and manage both, plus the showroom displays and service-drive audio, under one agreement with one number to call.
And it matters for compliance too. Connected camera systems are part of the environment the Safeguards Rule expects you to control and oversee. When the same accountable team runs the network and the cameras, that oversight is one relationship instead of a stack of vendor questionnaires.
And the pressure is measurable. Colorado Springs police investigated twice as many metal-theft cases in the first four months of 2026 as in the same stretch of 2025, 40 against 20. After-hours lot walks, wheel theft, and converter cuts are the dealership face of the same trend. Clear night footage at your entries and a logged key cabinet are the difference between an insurance claim that pays and a shrug.
Local Enough to Show Up
Most of the dealership IT specialists are national outfits working your store from another time zone. We are based in Fountain, which puts us between the two markets instead of at one end of them. Motor City Drive is about 20 minutes north on I-25, the independent yards in Pueblo about 35 minutes south. When a camera drops or the internet dies with customers on the lot, same-day response is typical during business hours, and you get a person who knows your store instead of a ticket queue.
Colorado has roughly 250 franchised new-car dealerships statewide, and a lot more independent lots that no franchise count includes. Those independents are exactly who we built this for: stores big enough to have real compliance exposure and real inventory risk, without a corporate IT department to absorb it.
Efrain Gutierrez
Owner, GTZ Integrations
Dealership Compliance Questions, Answered Straight
Does the FTC Safeguards Rule really apply to a car dealership?
If you arrange or broker financing for vehicle purchases, or lease vehicles on a non-operating basis for 90 days or longer, yes. The rule treats you as a financial institution with respect to that part of your business, and it has been fully in force since its phased deadlines landed in 2022 and 2023. Since May 2024 it also requires notifying the FTC within 30 days of discovering that unencrypted customer information for 500 or more consumers was taken.
We are a small lot. Does the rule still apply under 5,000 customers?
Mostly, yes. Below 5,000 consumers you are exempt from four things: the written risk assessment, the written incident response plan, the annual written report, and the formal testing regime of continuous monitoring or annual penetration testing plus twice-yearly vulnerability assessments. You still need a Qualified Individual, access controls, an asset inventory, encryption, multi-factor authentication, secure disposal, monitoring, staff training, vendor oversight, and the FTC breach notification. Encryption and MFA each have a narrow out, but only when your Qualified Individual approves an equivalent control in writing. The exemption trims paperwork, not protection.
Who can be our Qualified Individual? We do not have an IT person.
The rule explicitly allows a service provider to serve as your Qualified Individual. Three conditions come with it: someone senior at the dealership has to direct and oversee that person, the provider has to run a program that meets the rule, and the dealership keeps ultimate responsibility for compliance. Nobody can take that last part off your hands. That is exactly the arrangement we offer.
Our DMS vendor handles our IT. Is that not enough?
Your dealer management system (DMS) vendor runs their software, and their standing remote access into your store is itself something the Safeguards Rule requires you to oversee. The June 2024 CDK outage made the distinction plain. Nobody failed over to a backup DMS, because there is no such thing. What the dealer groups actually did, in their own SEC filings, was cut their connections to CDK themselves and run on manual processes until it came back. Containing your own network fast and knowing how to sell on paper are store-side jobs, and they are the part your vendor was never going to do for you.
Can the cameras and the network really be on one contract?
Yes, and it works better that way. Lot cameras ride on your network, so when they come from the same team there is no vendor gap for footage to fall into and no finger-pointing when something drops offline. You buy the hardware outright and own it from day one. If you want us monitoring and maintaining it, that is a flat monthly line we quote before you sign, billed separately from the hardware so you always know what the gear cost and what the service costs.
Compliance guidance here describes the rule as written; it is not legal advice for your specific situation.
The enterprise tools we deploy and manage
Ready When You Are
Grab the free assessment, or just call and ask anything about Safeguards, your DMS, or the lot. You talk to the owner, not a phone tree.