HDFC Bank makes ATMs more secure

Mumbai: HDFC Bank has incorporated ‘jitter-enabled’ card readers in all its 1,910 ATMs in order to prevent skimming or capturing of card details by fraudsters.

Rajeeb Chatterjee, Vice-President, ATM, NetBanking and Mobile Banking Product, HDFC Bank, said that ATMs have become a more preferred mode of banking in the Indian banking industry.

“A lot of customers prefer conducting transactions on ATMs rather than branches as it provides more convenience to customers,” said Chatterjee. NCR Corporation has upgraded the banks’ ATMs with ‘jitter-enabled’ card readers that will make common types of skimming attempts ineffective.

Skimming is a fraudulent practice wherein criminals attach a device to the ATM card reader area to capture important card data stored on the magnetic stripe.

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When a card passes through this fraudulent device, it can skim or copy the information on the magnetic strip of the card, said Nikhil Mhapankar, Regional Marketing Manager, Software and Security, Financial Solutions Division, NCR Corporation, South Asia.

NCR’s jitter-enabled card readers will help prevent fraud by disrupting these attempts to copy the data with a random stop-start movement during card entry and exit.

Though instances of skimming have not been noticed in Indian markets, but one cannot completely rule out the possibility of its occurrence.

DES technology

HDFC Bank has also introduced a triple DES technology in its ATMs. “An ATM is a channel of two-factor authentication — it requires a physical card and the PIN, in order to make transactions completely safe you need to provide security in both,” said Chatterjee.

The password gets encrypted at the keyboard level with the help of the triple DES technology assuring a three-stage security to the password being typed in by the customer.

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