NAFCU Services Blog

Jul 02, 2012

Successfully Navigating the Converged Channel Era

Guest post written by Eric Markiewicz, Director of Global Services Marketing and Offer Management, NCR Corporation

As the most frequently used touch point for credit union members, the ATM plays a key role in an evolving multichannel environment. ATM functionality has grown beyond simple cash withdrawal and continues to increase. Deposit capture and ad placements at ATMs, for example, add new sources of revenue streams, cross-selling opportunities and other personalized member communications.

In this converged channel environment, failure to achieve the highest levels of reliability, availability and security of the ATM can adversely impact the credit union’s brand. At the same time, credit unions recognize that it is neither feasible nor practical to keep ATM management expertise in-house. More and more credit unions are turning to outsourcing strategies, including specialized managed service providers to provide an innovative service delivery model that provides high availability in a secure fashion.

Managed services can drive efficiencies in the ATM channel in two primary areas: security/compliance initiatives and availability benchmarking.

Security and Compliance

The ATM remains at the core of converged channel delivery because it is a known and trusted channel for credit unions. This trust involves an awareness of the persistent threat of fraud as well as a strategy to neutralize it. With unprecedented levels of card fraud, we are witnessing increased numbers of malware attacks directed at the ATM by sophisticated and organized digital criminals.

To limit those risks, Payment Card Industry (PCI) has introduced data security requirements and guidelines for credit unions accepting cardholder data. PCI Data Security Standards (PCI-DSS) include security management requirements, policies and procedures for organizations that accept, transmit and store cardholder data. One of the key features of the PCI-DSS standard is the requirement to not only retain a vulnerability management program (a defense against any type of malware threat), but to also have a reporting mechanism to guarantee enforcement.

Managed service providers can help credit unions demonstrate compliance by providing best-in-class security processes, expertise and personnel. This ensures the necessary vendor-supplied security patches and updates are applied consistently, across the entire estate and in a cost-efficient manner.

In addition to offering patch management, managed service providers help defend against known and unknown threats, addressing the root cause rather than dealing with the symptoms.

The direct and indirect costs of resolving issues arising from malware attacks can be significant. Putting a reliable security process in place through a managed service provider can avoid these costs while providing you and your members enhanced security in a scalable and cost effective manner.

Availability of Endpoints

For credit unions, time is money so availability is critical. Minimizing downtime requires managed service providers to transform how they view service events. Managed service providers are transitioning from the break-fix model to a predictive model. Anticipating failures and proactively scheduling fixes before the ATM ever goes out of service is a more logical way of reducing downtime. In addition, monitoring services can help service providers respond faster to outages when they do happen, and provide a scalable and repeatable process to get ATMs back up and online for member use.

Forward-looking credit unions are leveraging the innovations offered by managed service providers to protect the converged channel with enhanced security and provide the maximum availability of critical, member-facing endpoints.

Original article appeared in The Federal Credit Union magazine July/August 2012 issue. Download the article here.

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