Symposium sheds light on bank security issues

ATMs are an increasing target for thieves, said attendees and speakers at the 2008 ADT Financial Security Symposium held last month in Florida.

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In late November, the FBI released bank crime numbers for the second quarter of 2008. In that time period, banks faced more than 1,400 robberies. The numbers were down, according to FBI Criminal Investigative Division Assistant Director Kenneth W. Kaiser, but he said "the propensity for violence during bank crimes remains a concern."

In 58 of those incidents (from a total of 1,443 incidents tracked by the FBI during that quarter), violence was involved. That included assaults, hostage situations and even deaths, noted Kaiser.
It was exactly that kind of criminal problem that brought members of many U.S. banks together for the 2008 ADT Financial Security Symposium in West Palm Beach, Fla., from Nov. 18-20.

Representatives from both enormous banks (Bank of America, for instance) and regional banks (Bank of Tampa, for example) met in the same room, hashed out common problems and tried to anticipate their future challenges. They sat in on lectures, networked over coffees, and even formed table-size workgroups to speculate on how to deal with select incidents. They talked budgets and buy-outs which precipitated from the economic recession and murmured between themselves about how that would affect security spending.

Speakers included representatives of the FBI, Postal Service, ADT technology whizzes, a workplace violence consultant, public safety specialists and others. Around the room and available for browsing during breaks were some of the emerging technologies for preventing criminal incidents. On table-tops, attendees could inspect top-notch video surveillance systems, sophisticated access control programs and even systems that would block credit card and ATM card skimming. ("Skimming" is the process of getting a card-holder to present their card and sometimes PIN to a fraudulent card reader which captures the card and access PIN information.)

In regards to the FBI statistics, these security leaders were here because financial crimes are a big problem. Just in that second quarter of 2008, robberies meant the loss of approximately $12.5 million according to the FBI's numbers. In the same quarter, monies recovered from bank robberies totaled only $1.7 million.

One of the common problems security directors said they were facing were instances of ATM thefts.

Read more about these problems at: http://www.securityinfowatch.com/online/Financial/Symposium-sheds-light-on-bank-security-issues/18954SIW339