LA CROSSE, Wis. -

According to DealerVault, its objective is to protect the “dealership data goldmine.” It’s all of the customer data that might have arrived through website leads, the F&I office or the service drive.

With some industry analysts’ expectations of customer data generating $2 billion in economic activity by 2018, Dealer Specialty Group, the parent company for DealerVault, highlighted how dealerships are leveraging its tool to protect this information and guard for cyber security.

In fact, company officials claim 13 of the top 25 dealer groups now use DealerVault.

In 2013, Authenticom and Dealer Specialty Group created a cloud-based system that was designed to allow automotive retailers control over how their customer data is stored and used. In addition to working with 13 of the top 25 automotive retailing groups, DealerVault has nearly 5,600 dealer customers and more than 450 vendor partners in total.

“The best metric we have for our success is the number of automotive retailers and their vendor partners who choose to work with DealerVault,” Authenticom chief executive officer Steve Cottrell said. "We always say, ‘We will only grow our business by making sure our customers grow their business first.’ Every day, we’re driving toward their success."

Cottrell reiterated that the “dealership data goldmine” at $2 billion annually projects to more than $100,000 per franchised dealer annually in additional costs. He claimed some DMS providers' additional data use fees support their own revenue growth, but drive up costs for dealers and their third-party vendors.

DealerVault offers standardized pricing of $25 per month for a single nightly data feed or $50 per month for two or more nightly data feeds.

“DealerVault has invested heavily in data security by leveraging Microsoft's most secure cloud-based solution, Azure,” the company said.

“In addition, DealerVault's easy-to-use web platform allows its dealership partners to quickly and easily view and modify current data feeds, check the status of its ongoing vendor projects, disable access when needed and manage multiple stores with the simple click of a button,” the company went on to say.