I remember when software maintenance was considered a luxury item by most of my customers. Regular security patching? There just wasn’t a reliable way to do it.
“Sneaker-net” was the term we used when technicians manually installed the latest updates during service calls. This rarely worked. It extended call times significantly, and sometimes the updates didn’t take. Often the ATM crashed, creating a new problem to be resolved. And if it DID work, documentation of the update was virtually non-existent.
In 2015, QSI launched a remote patch management program. Remote Management Console, or RMC, offered a secure way to apply Microsoft patches, fixes, and updates, as well as terminal software updates without having to have the technician visit the machine. And it was fully documented!
We quickly found other uses for RMC including being able to reboot an ATM remotely and pulling logs for troubleshooting. We learned that if we added a real-time back-up system, we could fully reload software remotely.
Anyone who’s ever had an engineer working in their drive-through for 3-4 hours to reload an ATM will immediately understand the value of remote reload. All these improvements were, and still are, included in the base price of RMC.
We listened to our customers, and they (you?) told us they wanted a solid anti-virus product for compliance. We launched an anti-virus program with real-time updates.
We learned quickly how valuable it is when the WannaCry ransomware attacks began. Every ATM with our anti-virus protection was automatically updated as soon as the fix was available – even before the alarm bells were sounding in the news about it! Once set up on an ATM, there’s only a small annual fee to maintain the anti-virus license.
To learn more, visit our RMC page or contact us at sales@qsibanking.com.
Next month – the evolution of electronic journal.