The Great ATM Heist, where a crime gang subverted the credit card system, could well be the digital equivalent of the Great Train Robbery of the 1960s.
While the logistics of the operation are impressive with hundreds of accomplices across twenty countries, the real moral from the story comes from how the gang targeted outsourced credit card processing companies to adjust cash limits.
Again we see the risks of throwing your problems over the fence, a system is only as reliable or secure as the weakest link and, regardless of how tight commercial contracts are, outsourced services can’t be treated as someone else’s concern.
No doubt banks around the world will be having a close look at their systems and how they can trust other organisations’ outsourced operations.
It’s always amusing when organisations outsource a function and forget that they can’t outsource their resposnibility for risk.