A remote management agent (RMA) gives an ATM fleet owner the ability to perform certain tasks without physical access to the machine, and implementing an effective, reliable product can reduce technician fees and travel costs associated with maintenance issues.

Efficiency is a crucial element of the ATM income stream. Besides the monetary cost of downtime, a deployer can lose customer loyalty and business reputation.

“Downtime can also affect relationships with merchants — they’re going to remember the times a machine is down more than the time it’s up,” said Jason Roth, CFO and president of Morrisville, N.C.-based ATM USA. “And if you’re the type of deployer that’s interested in getting into bank-branded revenue streams, you’ll really shoot yourself in the foot if the machines are not up."

A RMA needs to be able to address the issue of lost revenue when machines are down without deployers’ knowledge, and also needs to provide the ability to network ATMs from different manufacturers and model lines with a single, scalable solution.

“If a machine does 600 transactions a month, I would consider that a fairly busy site. For every day it’s down, you could be talking about $60,” Roth said.

Capabilities to look for in a RMA

Deployers should choose a device that offers a variety of features, including the ability to upload hardware and software details, retrieve log files on demand for delivery to the management server, run diagnostics remotely, perform a remote reboot, deploy software patches to the ATM, execute shell commands, change configuration parameters and communicate with XFS-compliant components

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A remote agent should also be able to gather and relay log text from all XFS-managed components on an ATM, facilitating the organization of this information into a snapshot of the current state of a machine. With a robust RMA, the deployer should gain a complete, current overview of each ATM in the fleet.

“There are a variety of tools on the market designed to provide device state information to the ATM operator,” said Jay Goodwin, vice president of sales and marketing for Cupertino, Calif.-based ESQ Business Solutions, a provider of ATM management solutions. “Some tools are bundled with the device itself; some provide information from the ATM switch; few provide a holistic view connecting specific and granular device state information with real-time transactional data."

Tips for choosing a RMA solution

A fully functional RMA should be able to provide current-state data on components such as the printer, ID card reader, cash dispenser, keypad, check reader/scanner, depository, text terminal unit, sensors and indicators, camera and alarm, among other things.

Other time and cost-saving features to consider might include the ability to assess cash levels at the machine, region and fleet level, alerts when levels are low and locating idle cash that could be moved to a higher-demand location.

“Not all ATMs are created equal,” Goodwin said. “An ATM in a crowded airport is busy constantly and produces strong revenue, whereas an ATM in an outlying suburb may only get used twice a day, hence the operator needs to make sure the big producing ATMs are always available.”

IADs, managing different manufacturers and model lines, should consider using a RMA that offers:

Windows process list: Understands what is running in Windows, if a rogue process begins, the RMA should alert or stop the ATM because it knows the accepted list of processes.
 
Windows services: Ensures that essential services that should be running are, and the other services that should not be started are stopped.

Software list: Manages which versions of applications are running to ensure that each ATM has the latest release of code running and that can include the latest anti-virus.

Hardware list: Determines if anyone added something new or something that was not included in the initial hardware list.

Windows logs: Monitors logs for errors that would affect the operation of the ATM.

In relation to monitoring fraud activity, a RMA can report on hardware activity in real-time. When combined with real-time transaction analysis, the IAD or FI can actively look for skimming and other potentially fraudulent activity on system service tools devices.

The holistic view of the two separate functions allows network owners to be proactive and close an ATM suspected of being compromised.

For more information on selecting a RMA, click here to download a free white paper titled "The Benefits of Real-Time ATM Management."