Editor's note: Mark Glover, a consultant with Retail Banking Research Ltd., filed this report on the ATM Industry Association's ATM Sec 2001 show from London for ATMmarketplace.com.

To quote ATM Industry Association International Director Mike Lee, ATMIA's first European ATM conference on June 1 in London was an event "with a purpose."

The compelling reason behind the purpose of the one-day conference on ATM security became all too clear during the opening address from Alan Townsend of the New Scotland Yard crime prevention squad on the rise in ATM crime.

While the conference was mostly focused on the UK, discussions were relevant to ATM crime worldwide. In the UK, ATMs are being installed faster than ever before, and their number could reach 60,000 in the not too distant future, according to Townsend.

"Never before have such large amounts of cash been so widely exposed throughout society," said speaker Paul Fullicks, national security manager at Securitas. As a by-product, successful attacks against ATMs in the UK rose from 20 in 1991 to 81 in the year 2000, and this is likely to escalate in line with the deployment rate.

According to Townsend, Ireland, the Netherlands and Sweden have the highest rate of attacks against ATMs in Europe, with the UK falling somewhere in the middle.

ATM attacks are becoming more popular because of the lack of effort involved in planning and executing a raid in comparison to traditional bank robberies, Townsend said. All that is needed is a stolen four-wheel drive vehicle and a builder's crane strap.

He said that such attacks yield maximum profit, yet attract lower sentences since they are classified as theft rather than robbery. Insurance claims for attacks against ATMs in the UK range between £5,000 and £100,000 -- toward the higher end when the attack causes damage to one of the many glass-fronted building societies in the UK.

Much of the rest of the conference dealt with how best ATM deployers can tackle the rise in ATM crime. A comprehensive risk assessment of the new remote ISO installations may result in the conclusion that the associated risks are too high. Nevertheless, in conjunction with the local police, the deployer security departments, cash-in-transit (CIT) and maintenance companies, measures can be taken to produce end-to-end solutions which can reduce the damage.

The ATM deploying community needs to take note that the easiest ATMs to attack are those with the four R's: remote, rural and regularly replenished, especially lobby-style ATMs located in convenience stores.

To help reduce the risks, deployers can make several security investments: ram-raid plates can be erected, the ATM should be bolted into concrete using chemical or expansion bolts, and call-outs from replenishment and maintenance companies need to be kept to a minimum or made irregular.

However, maintenance companies and deployers are leaning more toward "brain" than "brawn," as speaker Jim Easton from Cashtec put it, opting for technological solutions rather than increasing the number and strength of armaments.

Security consultants from Wincor Nixdorf and NCR were on hand to talk about their ideas for the new technological solutions. These included intelligent safes, ink maculation and fog obscuration.

Wincor Nixdorf champions the use of the "Blue Safe" by SQS, a security company based in Sweden. The safe is made of lightweight material but armed with several layers of sensors which detect and shield against attacks. These sensors, also installed in the "intelligent" cash cassettes within the safes, can be monitored remotely. On forced entry, the sensors can activate ink/dye packets which burst and degrade the cash rendering it worthless.

Another option is the use of fog/smoke obscuration. These technological deterrents can be used in the remote tracking of the ATM cassettes as well as the remote activation of the security measures. For example, sensors within the machine will inform the deployer security desks if a machine is attacked. The stolen cassettes can then be either locked remotely, or if breached, the ink maculation can be activated within a few milliseconds.

For all of this to work, however, conference speakers agreed that the CIT companies, deployers and maintenance companies need to work together to form an end-to-end solution.

The overall conclusion drawn from the conference was that solutions do exist to prevent ATM crime from spiraling out of control. These offer advanced protection not only against traditional crime but new crime patterns associated with CIT operations.

Security personnel will be less at risk as a result, since attackers will not be able to force guards to open cassettes. Deployers' costs will also be reduced since non-armored vehicles can be used, and only one guard is needed for CIT operations.