How to protect ATMs from attacks?

ATM attacks are common for one reason: ATMs are an attractive target. But how do banks and operators protect their ATMs from these attacks? Paul Nicholls, director of business development for Oberthur Cash Protection, shared key insights into this topic for a session at the ATMIA conference held from Feb. 8 to 10 in Orlando, Florida.

In the session, Nicholls shared some results from a study Oberthur did with ATM Marketplace on how banks in Europe and the U.S. are dealing with and responding to attacks.

European operators said that ATM attacks had stayed about the same while U.S. said ATM attacks were on the rise. This is in part due to the fact that European operators are becoming used to attacks. For example, due to the prevalence of explosive attacks, some countries have put regulations in place to not have ATMs in the same building where people live or in historic buildings.

The way the U.S. and Europe have responded to attacks has varied. The U.S. has put in more enclosures, while Europe has not, but both countries are putting in more CEN gas explosive resistant vaults.

Nicholls said that while there are many methods to protect an ATM, they usually only protect from one area of attack.

"We put street bollards to block rammers, but then they blew it up anyway. Each type is good for a specific type of physical attack," Nicholls said.

So how do ATM operators address attacks? Nicholls argues the best tactic is to "stop the attack in the first place" and make the ATM less attractive for criminals.

He believes the best way to do this is through intelligent banknote neutralization systems, which can automatically ink banknotes when the ATM detects an explosion or some other type of attacks.

This type of system can perform many tasks, for example it can fire before an explosion hits the ATM. With traditional passive BNS systems, it only fires after the explosion occurs and in many times, the dye just goes out on the ground.

Nicholls said this system is "indelible, clean and traceable." Also this system prevents the criminal from using the banknotes at a different cash acceptor or recycler.

In addition, such a service can be turned off during daylight hours, so there's no chance of it activating while an engineer is servicing the device. ATM operators can also integrate it with other services such as alarms that activate warning the criminal that the ink is about to fire, potentially saving the ATM.

Despite this tool, Nicholls did emphasize that predicting the future of ATM attacks is like predicting the weather, but that doesn't mean you can't take preventative measures to make the ATM a less attractive target for criminals.