One more bank has decided to move all its ATMs to a more secure platform

Mar 21, 2014 00:51 GMT  ·  By

Word is that 95 percent of the ATMs worldwide are still running Windows XP right now, so it’s crucial for everyone holding a credit card to convince banks to move to a much more secure operating system as soon as possible.

Cumberland Building Society is one of the companies that indeed decided to take steps to protect its 160,000 customers by upgrading from Windows XP Professional for Embedded Systems to Windows 7, in an attempt that would not only enhance security, but also provide new features to users.

ComputerWeekly is reporting that ATMs operated by Cumberland will now have contactless features, while the company is also working to launch gesture and multi-touch controls.

“Support is coming to an end and we are governed by security standards, so we had to upgrade. ATMs running XP could be 10 years old and would not support Windows. We had to upgrade ATMs with additional processors and memory,” Gary Richardson, general manager IT at Cumberland Building Society, was quoted as saying by the source.

In the meantime however, Windows XP remains the OS of choice for 29 percent of desktop users worldwide, despite Microsoft’s efforts to emphasize the risks of staying with such an old platform. End of support will take place in less than 20 days though.