Triple Witching Hour Looms for ATM Security Upgrade

NEW YORK -- Operators of tens of thousands of off-premise ATMs are facing a deadline this week to upgrade their equipment with mandated security protections or risk having them turned off by the EFT networks that switch their transactions. Visa USA has given ATM operators until December 31 to comply with the industry's Triple Data Encryption Standard, known as Triple DES. The standard calls for operators to encrypt keyboards and communication lines of older ATMs to make them Triple DES compliant. Most ATMs manufactured since 2003 are compliant with the standard. Previous Triple DES compliance deadlines have been set back, making some wonder how strictly the networks will force compliance this time. Because of the surge to replace old ATMs with machines that are Triple DES compliant, there is a shortage of new ATM hardware, leading some in the industry to believe that Visa and MasterCard, which own the Plus and Cirrus ATM networks, respectively, will grant another extension until March.