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ATMIA publishes best practices for ATM software

September 8, 2009

The ATM Industry Association has published a list of best practices for ATM operating software.

ATMIA says the objective of the best practices manual is to help ATMIA members establish a comprehensive ATM software-security policy.

With the industry's move toward more open platforms, such as Windows XP, and widely publicized reports about ATM hacks and malware used to compromise ATM transactions, ATMIA says it was time to pull some factual information together that could help ATM deployers protect and defend themselves.

The scope of the manual covers governance of all ATM software, from ATM plugs to the host system, said ATMIA chief executive Mike Lee:

The ATM has been an extraordinarily reliable and trusted self-service system for cardholders for 40 years, but it needs to be protected from emerging threats. The need to incorporate ATMs within a corporate IT software security policy or to create a specific ATM IT software policy is indisputable.

ATMs have become vulnerable to new internal and external attacks. At the same time, the boundaries of the ATM channel have expanded with new functionality and services, such as check and cash deposits, mobile phone top-ups, adverts, bill payment and ticketing — necessitating so-called endpoint security, since ATMs are now operated increasingly in conjunction with third party service providers and their systems.

An additional feature of the ATM Software Security Best Practices Guide is its checklist of recommendations. This will enable operators to benchmark their ATM IT security policies against all the best practices, which, together, address the three goals of a secure ATM software system: confidentiality, integrity and availability to end-users.

For more information, visitwww.atmia.com.

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ATM Industry Association (ATMIA)

The ATM Industry Association, founded in 1997, is a global non-profit trade association with over 10,500 members in 65 countries. The membership base covers the full range of this worldwide industry comprising over 2.2 million installed ATMs.

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