Irish Bank Outage Points Out POS Vulnerabilities
Written by Evan SchumanOn Tuesday (May 5) , the National Irish Bank (NIB) reported that “technology problems were behind the failure of its debit and credit cards at point-of-sale machines in shops and other businesses across the country” earlier that day. But while the unspecified glitch was resolved within a few hours, retail POS issues continued, prompting the bank to “apologize unreservedly,” according to The Irish Times.
Here’s where it gets interesting. The bank issued a statement that “as soon as the problem was identified, the network was switched to a back-up system and National Irish Bank customers are able to access their funds at the bank’s ATMs as normal now.” But what about Ireland’s retailers, whose transactions were halted? No emergent backup system for them? Another reminder that banks know ATMs and vaults, but POS is a new and lower priority concept.
Leave a Reply
Our Comment SPAM system is getting very aggressive these days and has been blocking legitimate comments. If you post a comment and don't see it appear within 2 hours or so, can you please send a heads-up to customer-service@storefrontbacktalk.com? Ideally, please include the time you posted the comment. That will allow us to try and hunt for it. Thanks! P.S. We're working on fixing the system, but we don't want to lose any valuable comments in the meantime.
I have strong reservations about the 'individual' certification and posting of that information for merchants. Can you imagine the potential employee poaching that might occur? The implications when competitors can look up how many are certified with each of their competitors? 
-Christine
