ATM safety and explosions

ATM explosions

A dangerous phenomenon that has now reached Austria

Austria was long considered the “island of the blessed” when it came to explosive attacks on ATMs. Unfortunately Austria lost this status in 2017 when criminals increased their efforts to blow up cash machines. According to the Austrian Federal Criminal Police Office, there were 13 attacks in 2017 and already 14 attacks between January and August of 2019.

What has long been a dangerous practice in Germany and the Netherlands is now increasingly coming to Austria. Besides the obvious risk of having cash stolen, it is the collateral damage that poses the greatest risk.

Attempts to blow up ATMs usually fail, but damage is still done to the surrounding infrastructure. Since the severity of a blast depends on many factors, it is difficult to estimate the effects of ATM explosions. Buildings are often damaged and, in the worst case, innocent bystanders are injured or even killed.

Hence the collateral damage is often many times higher than the damage incurred from stolen money.

Security as a must-have criterion

Holistic security concepts were already a priority during the development phase of the evo series.

In cooperation with internal and external experts, a wide range of attack scenarios, including explosions, were analyzed and weak points were identified. This allowed us to design and implement numerous countermeasures at an early stage of development.

When an attack does occur, time is of the essence. The earlier an attack can be recognized and the longer it takes, the lower the probability of success.

To create time delays, measures such as the following were taken:

Openings in the safe are “hidden” and additionally covered
- This makes it significantly more difficult to pour gas into the safe

Reduction in the net volume of the safe
- The potential amount of gas that can be poured into the safe is kept as small as possible.

Thanks to the standard safety features of the evo series, the probability of a successful gas attack is very low. Options such as an ExGas safe lower this probability even further and make the evo series the safest choice.

Golden middle ground
To increase security, you sometimes have to compromise on user convenience. ATMs should be very easy to access by authorized people (e.g. supervisors) and yet at the same time very difficult to access by unauthorized people. So you have to make a choice - security or usability.