The customer
Wachovia is a diversified financial services company that provides a broad range of retail banking and brokerage, asset and wealth management, and corporate and investment banking products and services. It is one of the largest providers of financial services in the United States, with retail and commercial banking operations in 21 states from Connecticut to Florida and west to Texas and California, and nationwide retail brokerage, mortgage lending and auto finance businesses.
Wachovia Corporation has a large and growing automated teller machine (ATM) network as part of its highly successful financial services business. That network now includes 5,100 ATMs in 19 states plus Washington, D.C. The ATM network continues to expand through merger and internal growth. Wachovia, like other banks, has requirements for ATMs that differ from its requirements for desktop PCs. ATMs are unattended, customer-facing devices that operate 24x7, that must maintain the highest possible levels of security and availability.
The challenge
Starting in 2003, the bank introduced a small number of Windows® XP Professional-based ATMs, running NCR’s multi-vendor APTRA™ software, into its network. They were standalone units tightly locked down locally with APTRA security, policies and firewalls. Because remote access wasn’t an option, a technician was dispatched to troubleshoot or reinstall the software onto an ATM whenever problems were reported. This was an expensive and time-consuming process. Wachovia wanted a way to centrally manage the security of these ATMs, in order to drive down the time and cost of ATM management.
The bank was implementing the Active Directory® service in Windows Server® 2003 across its corporate network but lacked expertise in the use of Active Directory for ATM networks. One of the key challenges that Wachovia faced was to define the relationship between its ATM network and the rest of its enterprise infrastructure—which was already based on Active Directory.
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