Essay Example on the ATM System

Withdrawal transaction

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The card is first inserted into the ATM system and then reads the information encoded on the magnetic strip found on the ATM card. The black strip or chip is encoded with unique card nu7mber, personal identification number, and the card expiry date. The card functions as a hard copy of the access data to the account. When inserted, the machine will inquire the PIN to authorize access to the account information which when verified communicates with the bank to allow access (Wasson, 2006). In this stage, the machine will display the account balance and then withdraw the required cash.

: Customer console

: Cash dispenser

: Customer receipt

Cash withdrawal

Message

Self

Making an Account Deposit

Just like cash withdrawals, automatic teller machines makes cash deposit much easier without the use of deposit slips or envelopes (Toh, 2007). The machines can accept up to 30 transactions and count as one transaction.

: Deposit

: Customer console

: Envelope Receiver

: Receipt

: Network to Bank

: Message

Self

Account Transfer

The automated teller machine also has an account to account transfer option that enables the user to move cash from one account to another the same bank or a different bank account.

: Transfer

Customer

: Customer console

: Message

: Receipt

Ethical and legal issues in using automated teller machines

The ethical issue that exists in the use of ATM system is the bank subscribers becoming victims of theft and fraud. Over the years, criminals have devised several ways of committing these crimes including vandalism, card skimming, and card swapping (Stallings& Brown, 2008). The criminals will vandalize the machine and temper with it in a way that they can read the user's PIN then later use it in other automatic teller machines. Card swapping involves the criminal monitoring the customers PIN then later on swapping in another machine. Another fraud involved in the use of automatic teller machine systems is card skimming and in this scenario, the criminal tempers with the machine and adds another card reader over the existing card reader. This way, they can obtain the card information and the PIN.

Due to some human errors, these machines have often dispensed less cash or at times more cash than required by the consumer (Firesmith, 2003). In cases where, the cash is dispensed more than the required amount, the majority rarely report. There are two ATM manufacturers: Tranax and Triton, who develop the machines with default passwords. The human error that exists in this scenario is that these passwords are used by the frauds to access the programming of the machine.

When developing the systems, these issues need to be put into consideration and sorted amicably to avoid future problems.

References

Firesmith, D. G. (2003). Security use cases. Journal of object technology, 2(3).

Stallings, W., & Brown, L. (2008). Computer security. Principles and Practice.

Toh, C.-K. (2007). Wireless ATM and Ad-Hoc Networks: Protocols and Architectures. Boston, MA: Springer US.

Wasson, C. S. (2006). System analysis, design, and development: Concepts, principles, and practices. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.