Testing Automation Helps Combat ATM Fraud

As technology evolves and cybercriminals become more sophisticated, preventing ATM fraud becomes an increasingly challenging job. Unfortunately, ATM fraud continues to grow significantly. It is estimated that from 2019 to 2022, ATM theft and fraud grew a staggering 148 percent.

The ATM Security Association (ASA) recently recorded over 10,000 global ATM crime incidents from nearly 2,000 reports. These incidents occurred across all methods of attack in both the fraud and physical security categories, but fraud made up 70 percent of all attacks.

ATMs are particularly susceptible to two types of attacks. 

• Physical attacks: This used to be breaking or stealing the actual ATM, but now more includes more sophisticated attacks that target the top box (known as the “black box”) of the ATM to gain access to its software components - where criminals can install malicious malware and other software.
• Software attacks: Cybercriminals are increasingly focusing on exploiting ATM software weaknesses to steal customer payment card and account information. These attacks typically target ATMs that have outdated software, weak local networks or other insecure/misconfigured services. 

Better Testing Means Better Results

There is no silver bullet to managing or preventing fraud. It is important that all of the ATM ecosystem components, including the hardware, the software, the network, and authorization systems, as well as internal processes, all work together to make life as difficult as possible for any bad actors.

Of course, all of these pieces need to be thoroughly tested to ensure they do indeed work together as required. And since fraud patterns continually evolve, seeking new vulnerabilities to exploit, so too must your ATM testing capabilities continue to adjust and expand. 

Unfortunately, organizations that rely on manual testing in their ATM lab will have difficulty finding the time and resources necessary to react and respond as quickly as necessary.

The simple fact is that manual testing is both time-consuming and tedious. It is also too often constrained by competing project priorities and limited access to operational ATM resources. These restrictions often force organizations to make compromises in what and how much they can test, leading to potential gaps that can be exploited by creative and aggressive fraudsters.

Automation Means Innovation

By taking advantage of virtualization technology and modern tools that support testing automation your developers, testers and QA resources can significantly speed-up and expand their testing capabilities. Automating even the most common ATM test cases, will enable your resources to spend more time on higher-value tasks, like developing new test scenarios to help fight fraud.

Using modern tools to improve your ATM testing not only helps protect your organization from fraud will also provide a number of additional benefits, including:

• Improved quality
• A reduced need for ATM hardware in the test lab
• Programmatic interaction (via a RESTful API) with ATM applications
• Integration with other enterprise systems

Interested in learning more about how you can use testing automation to help enhance your ATM security? Get in touch with Paragon Application Systems today. Our innovative ATM testing tools include flexible automation options that can run more tests in less time, enabling your resources to focus more effort on important issues like preventing fraud.