Settlement and security in the ATM space

We all know that security and ATM go hand in hand. We are one of the only industries that leaves giant boxes of cash sitting on the street, so it is no wonder that we have become an ever-growing target for those looking to illegally capitalize in tough economic times. In response, we are seeing some great innovations in the security space and the last few years have seen some fantastic advancements in hardware design and logical security.

The reality of this industry is that we are under attack constantly, but for ATM operators our losses are financial. As ATM operators our priorities are about protecting our money, our ATM equipment, and our commitments to investors and shareholders. While all that is necessary for our industry to exist, we cannot lose sight of the fact that for cash vendors and service providers, the priority right now is about protecting their people.

Physical security is taking a layered approach as we attach gates to our drive through ATMs or encase our ATMs in security boxes. Our approach is about delay and early warnings, the longer the attacker takes to get into an ATM the less chance of success, and a greater opportunity for authorities to intervene and arrests to be made.

As great as those physical security advancements are we must be mindful that they also make it harder for our technicians and cash vendors to access our ATMs and increase the time at the machine. This creates more risk for those service providers. We need to help find ways to offset these risks for our partners.

Early detection

As we talk about the great swathe of ATM attacks currently rolling through the country, we look for early detection practices to help ourselves as operators. At the same time, we must consider the importance of early detection in helping our law enforcement partners succeed in making arrests and tracking these incidents.

Jackpotting, man in the middle, and host spoofing attacks occur very quickly, and many operators struggle to verify losses after the attack. One method to help quickly identify losses after an attack is to have both host and local totals running and to compare the two. Having both running also makes it easier to provide evidence of the attack to other parties when you engage law enforcement partners or document your loss claims.

While dual totals might sound like a great solution it is no secret that accurate cash servicing has always been an area we can improve on as an industry. ATM operators' KPIs are based on volume and uptime – and mistakes during cash servicing are one of the problems that impact those dramatically. There is nothing more frustrating than having a perfectly good, high-volume ATM taken out for a few hours because the reject cassette was not fully docked.

Vendor processors

In a world where vendor processes vary dramatically and are then further impacted by utilizing different hosts, getting one total correct is sometimes a struggle, let alone getting two different total types on a single device. Achieving correct totals is a constant struggle in the industry. We waste so much time as operators running emergency protocols over incorrectly balanced terminals and inflating our workloads accordingly. We write increasingly detailed settlement instructions for early detection and some of those get quite convoluted making training and field implementation difficult for our technicians and increasing their time at the ATM.

Given there would be benefits to both operators and cash vendors, one area we can really partner is to find better, faster, and foolproof settlement solutions that help us both. We need to work together to engage our switch partners and hardware and software vendors to help us to get there. Improving and streamlining generic settlement processes will benefit ATM operators by enhancing processes and helping us to secure our cash, while at the same time aiding us in reducing the risk for those out on the streets keeping our ATMs running.