ATM attacks have emerged as a significant roadblock to Digital India with 30 lakh debit cards being reportedly compromised in recent cases of ATM frauds.
The ATM attack episode that came to light after State Bank of India announced reissuing of as many as 6 lakh ATM cards is considered to be the financial sector’s biggest data breach so far. Apart from SBI, 19 other banks including, Axis, HDFC, ICICI and Yes bank, were also targeted.
Also, outsourcing of key ATM operations to third party vendors is very common these days. According to investigations, a malware was detected in certain ATMs which were operated by the third party — Hitachi.
A few industry experts also believe that the reported compromise of data was possibly due to data breach from the online payment systems.
Adding to these vulnerabilities is the fact that security at most ATM kiosks are weak and that ATM machines in India use outdated communication standards.
While the National Payments Corporation of India and RBI have said that there is no need to panic and remedial actions have already been taken, cyber experts believe that this incident should be a wake-up call to upgrade the security framework of our financial systems.
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