NCR Showcases Innovative Security Solutions to Help Banks in the Middle East Defend its Customers Against Malware Attacks

NCR’s ‘holistic approach’ to security helps to proactively counter fraud and deliver trusted and secure banking interface

NCR Corporation (NYSE: NCR), a global leader in omni-channel solutions, today introduced its extensive suite of innovative security solutions to help banks in the Middle East offer trusted and secure banking environment leading to increase customer loyalty and experience. The NCR Secure™ security portfolio comprises NCR Solidcore Suite for APTRA, NCR Skimming Protection Solution (SPS), NCR Physical Protection Level 3, NCR Remote BIOS (Basic Input Output System) Update solution and NCR Hard Disk Encryption (HDE) amongst others.  NCR security suite when deployed as part of a comprehensive security strategy will provide financial institutions protection against rampant ATM attacks.

The entire suite of NCR Secure solutions will be showcased in Dubai at the forthcoming Cards & Payments Middle East 2016 event starting from May 31 to June 01, 2016.

NCR’s Remote BIOS Update Solution provides a first layer of protection against unauthorized booting and access to ATM hard disk. This tool allows financial institutions to remotely lock down the (BIOS) firmware on the ATM by applying a password and disabling booting from external devices. This service also periodically refreshes the BIOS password to ensure it remains secure. NCRs remote push enables no touch password implementation and maintenance, saving time and effort of banks IT staff resulting in significant cost savings over manual tech updates, preventing risk of errors and sharing of passwords.

Further layered protection is provided with NCR’s HDE technology. The solution prevents any files being added to the hard disc.  Both Remote BIOS Update and HDE will provide protection from common attempts of malware attacks on ATMs.  Further NCR’s HDE provides a pre-boot network authentication for each terminal. The terminal will boot to the pre-boot environment which will use the network to contact the customer’s HDE server. If, and only if, the server authorizes it, will the system boot to the OS on that hard disk. Moreover, even if someone steals the whole PC core, motherboard and drive, they will not be able to access the contents on the hard disk drive.

NCR Solidcore Suite for APTRA is a comprehensive ATM whitelisting software, which proactively protects ATMs from insider attacks by preventing the introduction of unauthorized code on the network and maintaining its integrity and availability, while NCR Physical Protection Level 3 is the recommended solution that can protect ATMs from Black Box Attacks by making it impossible for criminals to connect the dispenser of the ATM to an unauthorized core.

“Today, customer retention, loyalty and securing the banking environment across physical and digital channels from all potential points of compromise remains a key strategy for financial institutions around the world,” said Wael Elaawar, NCR managing director of Financial Services for Gulf and Saudi Arabia. “NCR is at the forefront of revolutionizing omni-channel banking solutions backed with its extensive suite of innovative software and security solutions that helps banks to safeguard their customer interest and remain a step ahead from various types of fraud and skimming attacks. And, although skimming still is the number one cause of ATM fraud around the globe for which we at NCR had developed the NCR Skimming Protection Solution (SPS) to help fight this type of crime, new forms of fraudulent activity including malware is rapidly growing across all regions, causing millions of dollars of losses per attack, which can easily be prevented by following the NCR Secure set of recommendations.”