VietNamNet Bridge – Though Microsoft ended its support for Windows XP on April 8, Vietnamese banks are making no move to tighten security by upgrading their ATMs to Windows 7.
No Vietnamese commercial bank has yet announced its plan to replace Windows XP with Windows 7 for their automated telling machines (ATMs), according to Thoi bao Kinh te Saigon.
Diebold Vietnam, a big ATM supplier to Vietnam, said it is working with some banks on a plan to switch to Windows 7. Diebold has sold nearly 3,000 ATMs to Vietnam so far. However, it is still unclear how many machines will be upgraded.
Banks buying new Diebold ATMs this year need not be concerned, as the XP operating system has already been phased out on all current models
Three options have been suggested by ATM suppliers in Vietnam. First, banks can buy new ATMs with Windows 7 integrated. Second, they can pay to upgrade their ATMs to Windows 7-based software. Third, banks can buy an embedded software package based on Windows 8.1, designed by Microsoft for ATMs.
When asked about security issues in the post-XP-support period, Chu Hong Minh, director of the ATM Center of Dong A Bank, gave only a vague answer. Dong A, he said, has been taking a series of concurrent measures – enhancing security measures throughout the bank’s network, and strictly controlling the ATM operation. He also said that the bank has “contingency plans”.
Representatives of Vietcombank, Oceanbank and Techcombank all have affirmed that their ATM networks have been operating normally.
However, Cao Sy Kiem, a well-known banking expert, and once the Governor of the State Bank, maintains that Vietnamese banks are using backward technologies for ATMs. Financial institutions, he argues, should have been planning on utilizing new technologies even in the absence of Microsoft’s cancellation of support for XP.
Kiem said that the currently applied old technologies have brought inconvenience. As banks apply different technologies and attempt to integrate different ATM models and series with different operation mechanisms, this sometimes creates problems and invites risk.
The expert thinks it would be better for banks to use the same technology, and the same product model of the same manufacturer. If so, the cash flow would be clearer and easier to control.
Warnings about the safety of the banking system have raised big concerns among clients. NCR, the biggest ATM supplier in the US, believes that 95 percent of ATMs worldwide use Windows XP.
Reuter has quoted NCR as saying that only 1/3 of the 2.2 million ATMs operational all over the world had been updated with Windows 7 prior to April 8, while the other 1.7 million ATMs are still using Windows XP.
In Vietnam, more than 20 million ATM cards have been issued so far, while there are only 15,000 ATMs.
TBKTSG
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