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Being prepared: A little extra cash helps!
Being prepared but having the wrong tools doesn't really count for much when trouble truly develops ...
November 26, 2014 by Richard Buckle — Founder and CEO, Pyalla Technologies, LLC
Road trips are a theme of mine at this time of year, but it has little to do with Thanksgiving — this year, the family is coming to us.
However, as I have observed before, this is the time of year when industry events and conventions take center stage, and given my total disdain for flying, it is also a time to hit the highway. Given the weather of late, it has proved to be a treacherous time. However, I was prepared!
Our vehicle of choice is the only Jeep in the entire Jeep range that isn't "trail ready" and winter is when that lack really kicks in. It's a 4 X 4 as you would expect with any modern Jeep, but its place is on the racetrack — the Jeep SRT hasn't the clearance or the tires to tackle the fury of winter in the Rockies or the Sierras, so preparation involves taking additional steps.
A couple of big bags of kitty litter, shovels and tool kit, candles and water, and of course, chains. Just try buying chains for a Jeep with wheel and tire combinations meant for track outings!
Experience has taught me to bring the right tools because when trouble strikes, it's usually unexpected and traumatic, and digging my way out of a hole is something I have done more than once. "Fingers crossed" is no preparation when you plan on a thousand-mile trip in the mountains.
But preparation involves more than the obvious: I broke with my usual pattern of making sure I had plastic with me and hit the ATM before I left Boulder. I stuck a twenty in a pouch on my iPhone, threw some extra cash in my wallet — a mix of twenties and tens – and just for good measure, a Ziploc bag full of quarters. When asked recently how I went about attaching snow chains to the rear tires of a Jeep, I simply responded by pulling out a twenty. Yes, the infamous "chain gang" at the base of the Sierras has been well paid through the years.
This final user event that dragged me across two mountain ranges was the annual NonStop Technical Boot Camp — a name I find rather amusing, as there's not a single NonStop user who would be prepared to tinker with a NonStop system the way other vendors encourage their users to do.
In a previous post that referenced this event, I failed to highlight that this was an important occasion for the payments industry, as the majority of the participants were financial institutions. From as far away as Australia and South Africa, Singapore and Japan, Europe and most of the Americas, NonStop users came to hear what was in store for them with a new generation of NonStop about to hit the marketplace.
It wasn't just an occasion for users however, as solutions vendors also made an appearance. While ACI Worldwide didn't bring coverage of its complete product portfolio with them, other payments vendors including Lusis Payments and OmniPayments certainly didn't hold back.
Previously the focus of tier-one FIs, NonStop and its falling price have not escaped tier two and three FIs, or those in emerging markets. Indeed, NonStop has seen several wins that have flown under the radar.
However, the premise remains. If you want the best platform to support a network of ATMs, then whether you are an acquirer or bank or are in any way directly responsible for ATMs, you might want to be prepared for NonStop support of the Intel x86 architecture and the lower prices that will follow such an introduction. Certainly, at the user event, this was all the talk among the NonStop community. But why? Surely current systems implementations besides NonStop are satisfactory?
Well, no. Due to the way security has been implemented on NonStop, it's never been penetrated. Stop and pause on this thought. Yes, multitier implementations in which NonStop is present have been penetrated, but this has only caused a rethink of whether ATMs, in particular, should be directly connected to NonStop — and the simple answer is yes. My peers are cautious about talking about this aspect of NonStop in case it provokes more serious hacking attempts, but that's already happening with no success to date.
Being prepared but having the wrong tools doesn't really count for much when trouble truly develops, and digging ourselves out of any holes that open up usually is something we are neither equipped nor anxious to face.
ATM networks will always attract the wrong crowd. The simple idea of duping ATM users with a skimming façade has become passé, but if the attacks we have seen on POS networks drive deeper into ATM networks, we all need to make preparations.
But NonStop systems? Surely not. And yet, during this NonStop event we heard that training on NonStop has risen by more than 25 percent year over year, so something is definitely happening even as companies are becoming better prepared.
Having cash on hand in times of trouble is as old as time itself. On the road, as so many of us are at this time of year, we just don't want to be caught out, and having an ATM just around the corner certainly is comforting. What we don't want is to pay a lot more than just transaction fees and this is something FIs know all too well.
I wonder how much additional preparation is being taken and whether our ATM networks are really as well prepared as we would like them to be — or is it still a case of fingers crossed?
photo courtesy 401(k) 2012 | flickr
About Richard Buckle
Richard Buckle is the founder and CEO of Pyalla Technologies, LLC. He has enjoyed a long association with the Information Technology (IT) industry as a user, vendor, and more recently, as an industry commentator, thought leader, columnist and blogger. Richard participates in the HPE VIP Community where he is part of their influencer team.
