News

A trained set of eyes

April 13, 2005

Pick up any banking trade publication and you'll soon be bombarded with images and stories of fraudsters' attempts to tamper with the ATM.

Skimming and card-trapping devices can be disguised easily, especially to untrained eyes. At an off-premise location, for instance, a tampered-with ATM could eat cards for days and have them fished out by a fraudster on several different occasions before the bank or credit union ever realized a problem.

Rob Evans, director of industry marketing for Dayton, Ohio-based NCR Corp., said many financial institutions rely on trained third-party service technicians to identify those types of devices.

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"When they go out there to service the ATM, they more readily recognize skimming devices and other things placed on the machine," Evans said. "In fact, we're seeing more and more requests for that very thing."

Evans said FIs' requests for techs to come out and inspect off-premise ATMs has tripled in the last 18 months.

Joni Sherlock, vice president of operations for Efmark Premium Armored Services, said techs provide a valuable service. Her team of first-, second- and third-line techs is trained to inspect five types of ATMs. "We really are the eyes and ears out there," Sherlock said. "And all of the armored and maintenance techs are cross-trained in both areas," she said.

Evans said buying and making devices that pull secure information from ATMs is getting easier for criminals every day. That availability is going to make ATM security breaches more prevalent and sophisticated, he added, and will necessitate that FIs use trained techs who can regularly inspect their machines.

"You can create a skimmer for under $200," Evans said. "It's amazing how easy and inexpensive it is to do."

Sherlock said that because techs know what to look for, when they see suspicious materials like tape on an ATM or in a nearby trashcan, they pay frequent visits to that ATM, just to make sure it hasn't been compromised since their last check.

A banker's perspective

Pasadena, Calif.-based Wescom Credit Union has been using Efmark for first-line service and vault cash replenishment for the last seven years. The $3 billion credit union owns and operates 140 ATMs, 90 of which are off-site, said Kevin Sarber, vice president of the credit union's remote and automated services division.

Sarber said having trained techs, whether through the manufacturing company or another third party, lessens the burden FIs have to carry. Wescom has been using Efmark for its first-line off-premise service since 1998.

"It's beneficial, since we have very infrequent visits to those ATMs from our own personnel," Sarber said. "From a fraud perspective and a security perspective, the technicians are our eyes and ears. We've had calls from (techs) about people lurking around the machines, or recommendations about how we could make the ATMs more visible from the street by trimming the shrubs, for instance."