Fighting Fraud

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Fraud is becoming an increasingly sophisticated business. With this in mind, Money Controls have attempted to meet the increasingly urgent needs of the industry by introducing ccTalk DES (Data Encryption Standard) encryption to its range of products.
 
The company, which was recently acquired by Crane Co. and is now part of the Crane Payment Solutions business group, states that the introduction of ccTalk DES was a direct response to retailer and operator demand for even greater security on machines installed on the gaming floor.
 
The Data Encryption Standard (DES) is a block cipher (a form of shared secret encryption) that was selected by the National Bureau of Standards (USA) as an official Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) for the USA in 1976 and which has subsequently enjoyed widespread use internationally. It is based on a symmetric-key algorithm that uses a 56-bit key. To further improve security DES can be enhanced to Triple DES, which applies the DES cipher to each data block three times.
 
Money Controls' DES encrypted products were first launched at IGE in London in January 2010. The products have been offered as a weapon to combat fraud, and use literally millions of potential combinations - 72,057,594,037,927,936 to be precise.
 
Unlike existing encryption protocols, every payment device and machine can potentially have a different DES key, which can be changed by the host machine. The machine's software can be programmed to change the key as frequently as every few minutes.
 
New advanced fraud devices have been developed and are sold amongst fraudsters. Fraud attempts have targeted coin mechanisms, bill validators, hoppers and machine controllers. Consequently, the comapny has rolled DES out across its full product range.
 
The company demonstrated how DES works at this year's ICE. Tony Morrison, Money Controls' European Sales Director said: "Security will continue to be a key topic for the gaming industry. While advances in technology have resulted in more efficient gaming machines, they've also resulted in increasingly sophisticated fraudsters too. The easy access to printers, scanners and colour photocopiers has meant the appearance of bills of a visually high quality, while higher quality fraud coins are now being produced too. Banks and mints have introduced new notes and higher security bi-metal coins but this won't solve everything.
 
"Manufacturers need to respond to operators' needs for products with increased security, as Money Controls has already done with our range of DES encrypted products. Since we launched DES we've had a very positive reaction from customers and the industry as a whole. DES is another example of how Money Controls' products can benefit customers' businesses, not only in terms of security, but reliability too."