The World’s ATMs Machines Moves to Windows 7

Microsoft is about to make a support change to Windows XP. Unfortunately this means that ATMs all over the world will need to be upgraded and changed to Windows 7. The scary thing is that, according to the largest ATM supplier in the U.S., NCR,  95-percent of the world’s ATMs are powered by XP.

Microsoft has announced an extension to its anti-malware support but eventually this support for Windows XP will be cut off leaving ATMs and anything else running XP, open to security risks.

This is not a surprise as Microsoft have been warning customers about a deadline for some time now, yet businesses using ATMs have been slow to respond to the announcements. It looks like Windows 7 will be the choice to replace XP but some may even need hardware upgrades, that’s if they don’t just need scrapping completely.

JPMorgan has admitted that out of its 19,000 ATMs, 3,000 will need “enhancements” before upgrading to Windows 7. This is likely to be a rather expensive event for banks and ATM manufacturers but is essential when considering the amount of use they receive each day by customers.

It is likely that when the change does come about, we will see improvements to the old and slow ATM. Let’s just hope the upgrades are completed in time so as to avoid any hacking incidents.