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ATMIA to address ATM crime in Europe
ATMIA's SEC 6 conference runs Oct. 23-24 in London.
October 11, 2006
Consumer perception is everything, and it is an issue that ATM industry leaders are grappling with in the States and overseas. The ATM Industry Association is addressing those concerns later this month during its SEC 6 security conference in London. (Read also, Conference focuses on building consumer confidence in ATMs.)
The conference will focus on security issues surrounding the European ATM market and will include speakers from ATMIA Europe, NCR Corp., APACS, the United Kingdom's payment association, and the Credit Industry Fraud Avoidance Scheme (CIFAS), England's fraud prevention service.
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"Our prime objective is to ensure that we're up to date with the new crime trends and obviously to bring speaker interest, in terms of new areas that are impacted by crime," said Graham McKay, executive director of ATMIA Europe.
One featured speaker is Claire Shufflebotham, NCR's global marketing manager for security and fraud prevention.
Shufflebotham is expected to focus on why the industry needs to protect consumer trust.
"Fraud incidents at ATMs are now not uncommon, and in some countries ATM fraud is actually hitting the headlines," she said. "The majority of banking transactions now happen at the ATM, but would more bad news stories mean that the consumer may use the ATM less? If consumers turned away from the ATM and went back into the branch for all their transactions, the results would be disastrous."
Shufflebotham said thousands of self-service transactions take place daily, but ATM security is something the industry must immediately address.
Alan Townsend, an ATMIA member and former officer with London's Metropolitan Police Flying Squad, is slated to host a presentation about physical ATM attacks in the United Kingdom.
According to ATMIA European crime statistics, 412 ATM incidents occurred from Jan. 1, 2006, to Sept. 30, 2006. Convenient-store crimes accounted for 33 percent of those crimes; gas-station attacks accounted for 22 percent.
Criminal minds
To reduce ATM crime, many countries have migrated to a chip and PIN system.
Eighty-six percent of England's payments are now PIN verified, said Martin Lewis, who manages ATM-fraud control for APACS.
CONFERENCE EXHIBITORS
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The conference's focus on physical ATM attacks stems from a May conference sponsored and hosted by ATMIA and California-based Palm Desert National Bank in New York.
Lewis said the new payment system has decreased ATM crimes in England, but those crimes will continue to occur.
Because Europe uses the chip and PIN system, McKay said, criminals are moving to countries like the United States that rely on the magnetic-stripe.
Implementing a good system isn't difficult, but requires discipline and follow-through.
In Europe, however, the most immediate ATM security concern is insider fraud - a breach that comes from within a financial institution, he said. "Sleepers," employees who have quietly worked their way through a bank's corporate structure only to "wake up" when they see an opportunity for criminal activity, are most often to blame.
"You can't just check people at the interview stage because usually their circumstances change through life," McKay said. "So there's a need for regular employee vetting and monitoring. These are the sort of things we've got on our agenda as well."
Click here for conference information.
Included In This Story
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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