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Share the information: Every ATM owner is in the same game!
It's time to pause and celebrate 2014. In somewhat muted terms, perhaps, but we made it, and the ubiquitous corner ATM is still being well used.
December 22, 2014 by Richard Buckle — Founder and CEO, Pyalla Technologies, LLC
Looking back at prior posts written at this time of year, I realized that I have said little about it being the festive season.
Perhaps my attention was drawn elsewhere then, but this year when it comes to ATMs, and in particular networks of ATMs, it's been a long hard row we have been hoeing, so it's time to pause and celebrate 2014. In somewhat muted terms, perhaps, but we made it, and the ubiquitous corner ATM is still being well used from what I have seen.
As a preview to New Year's resolutions, I would like to say that I plan to dump my credit cards and switch totally to cash, but that's a bit of a stretch. My accountant makes a strong case that I keep running my business through one credit card so that I can get that bank's annual expense breakdowns, though it's not always a pleasant read every January.
Still, having a bankcard — or as is becoming more the case, a mobile phone app — and returning to cash is something many of my peers and associates seem to be doing. There's always a down side from carrying a lot of cash, I know, but I at least know in detail the sum of my exposure to loss should something dreadful happen.
In the Dec. 22 edition of Fortune Magazine — the Investor's Guide 2015 — I came across a tech article, "Kisses, Hugs, and Hard Data." It makes a point that relates to much of what we need to consider doing in 2015. (Or at least take a few baby steps toward it, since wholesale adoption by FIs would mount to something quite revolutionary, I suspect).
"Historically data has been monetized and held closely, vs. shared," Hershey CEO J.P. Bilbrey said in the article. "I believe in a much more open environment and freer data." Later he added, "Your competitive advantage is being able to work with the information, not hold on to it."
This is not a call to free software or anything like that, but rather, a call for greater cooperation when it comes to observing patterns — such as those that occur in transaction traffic.
Consider that, isolated, one ATM network can be picked off by the bad guys only to be followed by another breach before information about the nature of an attack is detected and communicated. This really is a classic example of a large-scale application where those working on big data have the tools at hand to help diminish the risks.
On the website of one vendor working with big data — specifically, providing a platform for data in motion to be filtered, processed, enriched, and correlated with other streams and context data — I posted about enriching the consumer experience in the telco marketplace.
This vendor, WebAction Inc., is turning around the old capture-store-process model to a capture-process-store model that better suits the real-time world in which ATM networks live.
The post pulls from a case study in which WebAction supported data in motion from multiple streams, and it's where the notion of applying the concept to a network of ATMs came to the fore.
Surely, there's a way to know better what's really going on even before any single ATM network is penetrated. In the military, this often is referred to as a "Gods eye" view. Isn't that what those charged with overseeing the operation of a network of ATMs really need?
In the post, I wrote about shifting from a network-centric to a consumer-centric view when it comes to bad guys penetrating our networks. Safe to say, these guys are just another category of consumer, but in this case, they're the ones we want to detect early and stop.
Imagine this: the capability to look at a network and, in real time, detect anomalies that generate WebActions to be shared among FIs.
Yes, there's some legal gobbledygook to overcome in some markets in order to better localize and then freeze out attacks pretty much at their point of origin. But the more I talked to the team at WebAction, the more I realized that technologies such as big data and real-time analytics are what it's going to take to detect and thwart large scale fraud.
Perhaps the Fortune article has its headline backwards — especially at this time of year. I see genuine benefits arising from a more open environment where information flows more freely.
We might all be better served by the headline, "Hard Data; Hugs and Kisses," as celebrations begin over another fraudulent encounter terminated.
Yes, we made it! With this, I now wish you all the very best of festive seasons and, indeed, a prosperous year to follow!
photo courtesy opensource.com | 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.
