IBS Journal February 2015
ATM revamp: who’s doing what?
By virtue of having completed the migration of its ATM network to Windows 7, ABN Amro is in the minority of banks. This is despite the fact that Microsoft’s support for XP has ended and it is not issuing any additional security patches. Only those who have stumped up considerable expense for a separate customer support agreement will gain any sort of response from the supplier related to the old operating system.
Although banks have had considera- ble warning about the need to move, and despite the security implications, there are a few reasons for the slug- gishness of many. First, there have been other prior-
ities, such as EMV adoption in the US, and there are perceived to be no busi- ness benefits from upgrading, beyond security. Second, there is cost. A survey by
the ATM Industry Association (ATMIA) found that 28 per cent of respondents felt that more than half of their ATMs would need a hardware upgrade, as well as a software upgrade. Third, there is a line of thought
that as Windows 7 itself is half way though its lifespan (support runs out in 2020) then it might be bet- ter to wait and move to Windows 8 (although no ATM stacks are available on this so far). Given that Windows 10 (there won’t be a Windows 9 for reasons known only to Microsoft) is already on the horizon as well, banks can see a never-ending upgrade chal- lenge. There are other unattractive mile-
stones on the way as well, including the end of Internet Explorer support for Windows 7 in January 2016 (requir- ing an upgrade to IE 11) and the end of support for Microsoft’s .Net Frame- work, also in January 2016, with many ATM applications on this. The advice of Pat Telford, principal
consultant at Microsoft, is ‘establish a set of tools and techniques to move to a new operating system whenev- er you want to in the future’. He also emphasises the potential vulnerabil- ity of Windows XP, including the pos- sibility that attackers will ‘reengineer’ patches for Windows 7 to try to find ways to exploit the older operating system. ‘Once there is a patch, it gives hackers a clue and they will reengi- neer because the same vulnerability might be in the older operating sys- tem too.’ Patches provided to those on extended XP support might similarly be analysed and exploited. Telford also highlights the
improved capabilities with Windows 7 for the central management of ATM software, using proven tools and tech- niques. He gives the example of Sco- tiabank, which saved around $900,000 when it applied such an approach to 1000 ATMs, with the Canadian bank now extending this to another 2500 machines. ‘So it can easily pay for itself if the size of your ATM fleet is 400 or greater,’ he says. Raiffeisen in Switzerland is anoth-
er bank to have gone through the entire upgrade project for its ATMs. For the third largest bank in the coun- try, made up of 316 branches with 3.7 million customers and 1604 ATMs, it was a major project. Around 60 per cent of its machines are from Diebold, the rest from NCR. It initially carried
out a risk assessment related to XP and then started to plan the project. It decided that all ATMs should
be on Windows 7 by April 2014 and this was achieved. ‘We wanted to avoid any reputational risks,’ says the bank’s head of payment systems, Kil- ian Stillhart. These were confirmed by security specialists, he adds. It worked closely with the two ATM suppliers to understand their strategies, planning and resources. This was in late 2011 and early 2012, with a pilot underway early in the new year. Timelines were finalised and two teams of technical engineers were created, one for each ATM vendor. At Raiffeisen, around 15 per cent
of the ATMs needed a simple oper- ating system upgrade. 65 per cent needed new drivers, including card readers, and these were replaced. In total, around 15 per cent of PCs were replaced and five per cent of the ATMs were replaced in their entirety. The lat- ter were mostly between eight and 13 years old. There were problems with the
migration including defective power units, issues with USB interfaces, soft- ware-based glitches including ones linked to the XFS interface, and other issues with CD-ROMs. Nevertheless, in the end, the bank succeeded and the project was on time. The bank basical- ly decided, ‘the longer you wait, the greater the risks’, Stillhart concludes.
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© IBS Intelligence 2015
www.ibsintelligence.com
spotlight: atm
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