Mumbai, May 15 (FE Online): The RBI has directed banks to operate their ATMs only after the installed computer systems have received a special Windows update to protect them from a malware impacting systems across the world. This directive comes in the wake of global system outages due to WannaCry ransomware.

“RBI has asked banks to update specific Windows patches on ATMs urgently and not to operate ATM machines unless updates are in place,” Times of India (ToI) reported quoting an unnamed official with a public sector bank. Banks have passed on the directive to their management service providers. ATM operators, however, say that there is no threat to customer data or money.

“The objective of ransomware is to shut down critical information in networks and prevent access to this data. In the case of ATMs, there is no data stored in the machine. Neither is there storage of any kind of logic that will block transactions. Even if a machine were to get affected it can be reformatted and put to use immediately,” Manohar Bhoi, president (technology) at Electronic Payments and Services — a management services firm that handles ATMs for public sector banks — told ToI.

Applying software patches is done by the vendors who supply the ATM and according to Bhoi, this can be done remotely and usually the vendors run their tests on the patch before an update.