On behalf of the EAST Board I would like to thank all those who have worked so hard to provide information, time and resources to help us to meet our targets and objectives during 2019. Some of the highlights are as follows:

We held National Member meetings in Lisbon in February (our 47th Meeting hosted by SIBS), in The Hague in June (our 48th Meeting hosted by EC3 at Europol) and in London in October (our 49th Meeting hosted by the LINK Scheme).

49th EAST Meeting

The 49th Meeting was immediately followed by a Terminal Fraud Seminar and an ATM Physical Attacks Seminar.  These successful events were organised by our Financial Crime & Security (FCS) Events team and were co-located with RBR’s ATM & Cyber Security Conference 2019 (#ACS19).

The EAST Expert Group on All Terminal Fraud (EGAF), chaired by Otto de Jong of ING Bank, held three meetings in January, May and September, all hosted by ING in Amsterdam.

The EAST Expert Group on ATM and ATS Physical Attacks (EGAP), chaired by Graham Mott of the LINK Scheme, held two meetings in March and September, both in The Hague, one hosted by Europol and the other by the LINK Scheme.

The EAST Payments Task Force (EPTF), chaired by EAST Development Director Rui Carvalho, held two meetings in April and November, both hosted by the BPFI in Dublin.

Rui Carvalho now represents EAST at Europol’s Advisory Group on Financial Services and attended three meetings of the Group in March, June and November.

AG-Financial Services

In addition to the above we supported Law Enforcement during the year as follows:

  • In January I participated in and presented at a Conference on the Prevention of ATM Physical Attacks, jointly organised by the EUCPN and Europol.
  • In May and November Rui participated in and presented at P3 CyberFraud trainings in Austria and Finland. These events, which were organised by the European Cyber Crime and Fraud Investigators (ECCFI), were funded by the ‘European Union Internal Security Fund – Police’.
  • In July Rui participated in and presented at the fifth edition of the Europol Training Course on Payment Card Fraud Forensics and Investigations at the Spanish National Police Academy in Ávila, Spain.  Rui Carvalho represented EAST.
  • In November I presented remotely to a Skimming Working Group Meeting organised by the US Secret Service and the NCFTA in Scottsdale, Arizona.

EAST continues to keep abreast of the latest fraud trends and crime information, publishing our European Payment Terminal Crime Reports and European Fraud Updates.  Our thanks again go out to all the people and organisations that have shared information for the above, and for EAST Fraud Alerts (25 sent out this year to date), EAST Physical Attack Alerts (9 sent out this year to date) and EAST Payment Alerts (6 sent out this year to date).

EAST Associate Membership continues to grow. We now have 213 Associate Member organisations from 53 countries and territories. This membership category is open for worldwide application to all Banks, Law Enforcement (free membership available), and other approved ATM Stakeholder organisations.  Next year we will announcing a new membership category!

Every best wish for a wonderful festive break and a very happy New Year!

Kind regards

Lachlan