Bank tech-trends News
 

October 23 - 27, 2006

• Hardware News
• Software Updates
• ATMs/Kiosks
• Biometric Digest Highlights
• Wireless World
• Security Section
• Leaders Roundtable
• Technology and Marketing
• Online Banking/E-Commerce/
  Website Design
• Internet Access
• Call Centers

Hardware News

IBM is targeting small businesses with their new System i server. To attract those users, the IBM System i 520 Solution Edition lists a similar price to Dell's PowerEdge server, but Big Blue claims that their server offers a closer integration of security, malware protection, database and storage. IBM says that this combination enables smaller organizations to manage all their data in a single spot, whether it is used for accounting, customer relationship management, e-mail or disaster recovery.

While Dell’s PowerEdge server line is nearly a decade old, they continue to improve it. The Dell PowerEdge 2950 is sleeker, faster, richer in options, and easier to work with than its predecessors. It comes with dual-core Intel Woodcrest CPUs and supports Windows Server 2003, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, VMware VI 3, Suse Linux Enterprise Server 10.

Fujitsu will soon join two other major PC makers in offering a portable computer that uses flash memory in place of the traditional hard disk drive. The company will offer a 16GB or 32GB flash memory disk as an option with new B-series and Q-series machines. The company is also offering a hard-disk drive that automatically encrypts data as an option with the B-series machines. The drive, produced by Seagate, uses hardware to encrypt all data being written on the drive and decrypt data as it is read.

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ATMs/Kiosks

For many years, some Internet banks have reimbursed their customers for ATM fees. But now surcharge-free ATM access is spreading to many other institutions. Learn more about this trend in the upcoming issue of BANK tech-trends - subscribe now.

North Carolina-based Pay E Mail is targeting telephone booths with their new Pay E Mail Internet kiosk. Using MEI’s Series 2000 Combo Acceptors, the kiosks let users pay with cash, credit or debit cards. The firm is targeting airports in Atlanta, San Francisco, Texas, Florida and Pennsylvania.

Looking to increase Brand Recognition and provide members with surcharge free ATMs?

Nationwide Money Services, Inc.’s Branded Cash Program is the answer. Fully endorsed by the VA Credit Union League and the CU 24 Network, our Branded Cash Program provides the ATM equipment, great locations, processing, maintenance, insurance, marketing rights and surcharge free transactions for your members, you only provide the cash and cash services for the ATM just as you would if you owned them. The ATMs look and act like your own, extending your reach or filling out your current market.

Our current CU partners include: AEDC, Beacon, Bronco, Carolina Collegiate, Educators, Freedom First, Food Lion Credit Association, Heritage Trust, Martinsville Dupont, NSWC, Old Hickory, Peoples Advantage, Southeast Financial and US Courthouse.

NMS also offers their ‘ATMs Made Easy’ Program for full service ATM management and placement services if you like the idea of having ATMs, but don’t want the hassle of day to day management and the associated costs for maintenance and unplanned expenses like triple DES.

For more information about the Branded Cash Program contact Bob Colabrese, EVP of Sales & Marketing at:

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ThinkPad notebooks from Lenovo, which already let the user log on with a thumbprint instead of a password, will now allow users to encrypt their hard drives at the press of a finger. The program works with Utimaco's SafeGuard Easy software and the option will be available on the newest ThinkPad models in series 60 and higher.

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Yodlee has launched Yodlee Mobile which is designed to make online banking applications available via the mobile channel. After securely logging-in, consumers can check account balances, view transactions, and receive fraud monitoring alerts. Yodlee Mobile also extends Yodlee MoneyCenter – a suite of consumer banking applications – to provide mobile bill pay, and mobile funds transfer capabilities. Yodlee claims that most financial institutions can be mobile-enabled for a pilot in less than a week.

D-Link has become the latest networking vendor to introduce a line of WiMAX customer premises devices. Analysts say that the release of a WiMAX router from one of the leading home and small business networking vendors underscores how rapidly the multi-gigabit long-distance WiMAX technology is becoming both available and affordable. The D-Link WiMAX router will incorporate a radio based on the IEEE 802.16e mobile WiMAX standard for a 2-3Mbps link to a base station up to several miles away, and a second radio to support Wi-Fi connections with PCs, notebooks and other client devices.

As wireless handheld devices begin to act more like PCs, they need to be secured just like PCs, if not even more. That is because e-mails, files, and electronic wallets are increasingly being stored on Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), BlackBerrys and smartphones. Some experts say that is an absolute necessity, citing statistics that show that about 30% of all smartphones are lost or stolen annually, compared with about 10% of laptops. Learn how Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Intel and others are working together on a standard to secure mobile devices in the upcoming issue of BANK tech-trends - subscribe today.

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According to a recent study by global research firms Nucleus Research and KnowledgeStorm, one in three people write down computer passwords, either on a piece of paper or in a text file on a PC or mobile device. They found that companies' attempts to tighten IT security by regularly changing passwords and making them more complex by adding numbers as well as letters had no impact on security. The firms suggest that organizations should look to more advanced methods, including single sign-on systems and biometrics, such as voice recognition devices or thumbprint scanners, or cognitive biometrics.

From an IT perspective, one of the best uses for the Internet is for technical support. However some security analysts are concerned about the fact that when you have a support problem you need to provide a great of information, e.g., OS type and version, software installed, patches, nature of problem, network settings etc. They argue that by providing this information in a public forum, potential attackers able to form a clearer picture of your IT infrastructure and fine tune their targeting plans. They suggest that if your bank's employees use public forums for support, insist that they use an email address that does not refer to the bank, just to be a little safer.

Phishing kits have been around for years, but increasingly they are much more powerful and less costly. Unfortunately, the marketplace for phishing toolkits, which can allow technophobe criminals to quickly and easily set up spoofed versions of banking websites, is booming, with kits changing hands for as little as $30. According to a Websense Security Trends Report, phishing toolkits sell for between $30 and $3,000, depending on their sophistication, ease of use and their ability to defeat antiphishing technologies.

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Stay Tuned for Upcoming Leaders Roundtables! 

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While some people would argue that e-mail marketing is dead, other say that is still alive and working well for some financial services firms. Proponents argue that is an especially effective tool for reaching younger consumers. Learn more about the trends in e-mail marketing in the upcoming issue of BANK tech-trends - subscribe now.

MasterCard Worldwide announced the launch of a debit card rewards program that will provide cardholders a new way to save for the rising costs of higher education. The new college savings program that is dubbed Upromise. Cardholders can earn these savings on purchases made at thousands of locations in the Upromise merchant coalition. Cardholders will have the option of having the funds deposited into a tax-deductible 529 College Savings plan through Upromise.

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The majority of US online bankers would move their account to another institution if it meant they would gain access to more online services, according to research released by CashEdge. The survey also found that consumers prefer Web banking to branch banking. Around 69% of respondents consider visiting their branch "a chore" and 88% try to minimize branch visits. More than three quarters (78%) say that if possible they would never go to a branch to conduct a financial transaction.

The Aite Group is predicting that the percentage of US consumer bill payments that are made online at consolidator websites will rise from 14% this year to 28% by 2010. These websites, which are operated by financial institutions or third-party service providers, consolidate bills from multiple billers. By 2010, consumers will pay 21.8 billion in recurring bills, up from 19.2 billion this year, Aite Group estimates. It says that around 50% of these bills are credit card, utility and phone bills.

Wire transfer volume has the potential to grow significantly if parties involved in the wire transfer process work together to overcome current inefficiencies, according to a new study released by The Clearing House Payments Company and the Federal Reserve Banks. The report concluded that if banks do not take an active role in making improvements to the wire transfer system, payments that could benefit from the immediacy and finality of wire may default to the Automated Clearing House (ACH) instead. Proactive steps that should be considered include:

• Enhancing payment system operators, bank and software vendor capabilities to include remittance information with wire transfer payments
• Supporting a common industry minimum remittance standard, such as EPN STP 820 and ISO 20022 that can be used by companies worldwide to move remittance information with the payment
• Enabling bank cash management systems to integrate more effectively with accounts payable and accounts receivable systems to facilitate straight-through processing.

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Internet Access

Internet Explorer 7 Version 1.0 is finally ready, and it may cause problems with some Web-based applications, mainly due to its increased security. IE 7 has dozens of new features, but here is a summary list of the most significant security features (not including Protected Mode available only in the Vista version):

-- Anti-phishing filter
-- Improved digital certificate handling
-- Better encryption support
-- Improved URL handling protections
-- Improved XSS (cross site scripting) protections
-- Improved add-on management
-- Safer ActiveX control handling
-- Improved pop-up blocking
-- Privacy improvements
-- Support for international domain names
-- New RSS feeds
-- Larger minimum window sizes and other fixes to prevent malicious tricks
-- One-click Fix My Settings feature
-- Single-click browser-content cache deletion
-- Improved parental controls
-- More than a dozen other new security options

Forrester Research released a report called, "The Evolving Branch Office: Intelligently Reducing Your Network Infrastructure Footprint." In it, they recommend that IT Departments should develop a three-stage approach over the next few years. The firm advises network managers to deploy appliances that consolidate similar services today, focusing on connectivity, security and acceleration. That means combine routing, switching and Wi-Fi functionality, deploy a unified-threat-management (UTM) device, and couple wide-area file services (WAFS) technologies with WAN optimization tools. Second, Forrester suggests embracing evolving standards such as IPv6 and SIP. Finally, network managers should look to integrate acceleration technologies in the future that will be able to effectively fold in caching, compression, protocol acceleration and traffic management tools.

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Call Centers

Determining the correct number of inbound lines to your call center can be tricky sometimes. If your network carrier can't help, there are a number of formulas that are available including: Erlang B.; Poisson; and retrial tables. The Erlang B. formula is widely used to determine the number of trunks required to handle a known calling load during a one hour period. The formula assumes that if callers get busy signals, they will never retry. However, since some callers retry, Erlang B can underestimate trunks required. The Poisson formula assumes that if callers get busy signals, they keep trying until they successfully get through. Since some callers won't keep retrying, Poisson can overestimate trunks required. The retrial tables formula assumes that only some callers will make additional attempts to reach the call center if they get busy signals. Each call center will have to make their best judgment about which method to use, but either way it is important to take into account your IVR/VRU system since it requires trunking capacity as well.

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