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Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Munch & Byte : Labour Pains of ATM Deployment


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A. Labour Pain of Conceiving Retail ATM Segment:
As per the press relesese, NY has designed a law to combat identity theft by tracking private ATMs in businesses other than banks. Private ATMs are not regulated by the federal or state governments.

NY Police say ATM owners can rig machines to record card account numbers, which they then could use to burn onto duplicate cards. With the registry, the county's Office of Consumer Protection would have information about the owner of a machine if a problem arose. A criminal could buy 10 ATMs on the Internet, rig the machines and then lease them to unsuspecting store owners.

Statistics from the Federal Trade Commission that show $50 million was stolen through ATM transactions in 2003.

Most of the retailers in the city are against such unthoughtful act of goverment. They argue on following main points.

a. Visa and MasterCard were requiring private ATMs to be "triple encrypted" by April, meaning they will have
three layers of identity protection for users.
b. Liability of ATM PIN and card information liabilities is tripetriate - lies with ATM card holder - Card issuer
equally as ATM transaction acquirer.
c. In case govt. and federal agency wants to beef up personal identity threat, it can not be at the cost of eating
cost of Retailer's money. It can be done by federal reserves.

The registry requires businesses with private ATMs, such as retail stores and gas stations, to pay a one-time fee of $55. The money would pay both the county's Office of Consumer Protection to administer the program and the county's computer crime unit for identity theft-prevention education.


Indian Scenario:
Indian goverment is still in it's infancy of setting up CA (MTNL) and cyber law. There are no ISO and retailers for ATM in Indian markeplace. ATM instalaltions are governed by centeral bank and each location requires central bank's branch banking licenses.

This proves that, NY problems are not likelyhood to be faced by Indian ATM deployers but again we are comparing a very small ATM deployment of around 13,000 ATMs against 2,15,000 ATMs in US.

Product Success Story: Diebold's Opteva ATMs with Agilis Terminal Software:
Recent win of Bank of Russia with 100 ATMs order make the score of Diebold's new ATM range of Opteva with Agilis reaching to 25,000 by Jan 2005. Product was launched bearly in Dec 2003. June 2004 registered sale of 15,000 units.

Career Tip for Grey Hair IT Professionals:
A junior programmer since 1978 and worked up to a system analyst. Presently, enrolled in a study program to achieve a certificate in IT project management and a secondary certificate in business analysis. What are the job prospects for this combination?

It's very encouraging to see that you are furthering your education. Continued learning and skill development are critical, given the pace of technology change and the highly competitive business environment.

Project management skills have been in high demand over the past several years, and the demand seems to be increasing. Companies now realize the importance project management plays in successfully deploying technology solutions.

IT has been criticized for not delivering an acceptable return on investment. An organization that values and embraces a strong project management culture is more likely to generate a higher documented ROI on technology initiatives. Training in project management should entail more than just how to plan, organize, staff and manage a series of technical tasks.

It's important to include the business aspects, such as business process flows, requirements gathering, user acceptance testing, and most important, business change management. Business analysts are often called upon to assist with the extraction, interpretation, development and documentation of business rules, requirements and test plans. Business analysts might reside in IT or in a business unit. In either case, they need to have a thorough understanding of the business function they are supporting. The job prospects for someone with training and experience in project management and business analyst techniques are extremely good.

You can opt for the PMP certification awarded by the Project Management Institute. Look for companies that have a formal project management office. You may be hired as a business analyst, project coordinator or junior project manager. From there, you can learn the business and will have opportunities in project management for the industry you have chosen.