Bank tech-trends News
 

September 4, 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

APC is perhaps the best known uninterruptible power supply (UPS) manufacturer, but Tripp Lite's SmartPro series of UPS systems are an excellent choice as well. SmartPro UPS Systems provide line-interactive battery backup for servers, data centers, VoIP/telecom systems, and internetworking equipment. Advanced Automatic Voltage Regulation constantly monitors incoming voltage and increases or decreases the voltage to supply consistent power without draining batteries, and their PowerAlert management software can control all brands of UPS systems with one centralized management interface.

Hewlett-Packard is taking on 3Com, Cisco, D-Link, Netgear and Nortel with their line of ProCurve Switches. For example, the ProCurve Switch 1800 is well suited for a small business with little or no IT staff, while the 2810 is aimed at larger, more sophisticated organizations with its management, Gigabit support and as many as 48 ports. The ProCurve Switches are manageable from a Web interface and support virtual LANs (VLAN). The 1800-8G switches run around $200.

IBM just rolled out several quad-core systems that provide performance enhancements and configuration flexibility. The IBM System p5 Express Servers use IBM's Power5+ processors and the systems, and are competitively priced to x86-based systems. The p5 505 Express starts at $3,400; the p5 505Q starts at $5,500; the p5 510 starts at $4,250; the p5 510Q starts at $5,550; and the 520 starts at $5,430.

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ATMs/Kiosks

Visa USA and MasterCard International have been asking ATM owners for years to upgrade their machines to Triple Data Encryption Standard, or Triple DES, but many deployers are still not compliant. Although several deadlines have come and gone, they have both set new ones: Visa USA wants all ATMs on its network Triple DES compliant by the end of 2007, while MasterCard International has set a deadline of December 31, 2006. Some industry observers believe they won’t grant additional extensions, while other feel that they will move the "deadline" again to avoid losing revenue by taking non-compliant ATMs offline.

Ipsos-Reid performed a survey for the American Bankers Association that showed - unsurprisingly - that young people prefer ATMs and online banking to a visit to the branch. Thirty-five percent of the survey’s respondents between the ages of 18 and 34 said they prefer to use the online channel, while 33 percent said they prefer the ATM. For respondents between the ages of 35 and 54, the ATM came in third behind branches and online; while senior citizens prefer to uses branches first, then ATMs second.

Financial institutions and independent ATM deployers learned many lessons in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. This hard earned knowledge covers contingency, clean up and connectivity. We will cover them in the upcoming issue of BANK tech-trends - subscribe now.

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:

904-395-1147 or

bob.colabrese@GLXS.biz

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VoiceVerified, a provider of voice biometric verification technology and services, is targeting financial institutions with their solutions. Using their patent-pending Point-Service-Provider (PSP) model, they offer remote voice authentication as an on-demand, scalable service. This ASP model means that the bank needs virtually no hardware or licensed software. Your telephone banking system routes calls to VoiceVerified where their Dynamic Voice Challenge engine matches the caller’s voice to a previously enrolled sample, and they return the result within seconds. The PSP delivery model is designed to help financial institutions comply with the FFIEC’s stronger authentication mandate. Somerset Trust Co, Somerset, Pa.-based bank which is a family-owned institution with more than $425 million of assets, is the first financial institution to pilot a solution from VoiceVerified.

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Wireless carriers are hoping that the Federal Communications Commission will give them precedence from electric and phone companies when disasters strike. They argue that wireless service has become a lifeline during disasters, and that most outages stem from cell towers that lose power or landline phone service. They would like to be placed on a priority list that includes hospitals, public safety agencies and water plants. However some power and landline phone companies are resisting wireless carriers' requests for preferred treatment. The wireless firms contend that they are not seeking special treatment for repairs of its entire network, but rather for critical, high-volume cell sites that need to be fixed quickly.

The cell phone as payment device is an emerging payment method that is slowly making its way to the United States. Consumers in Japan, Taiwan, Korea, and Brazil already can use their cell phones to pay for purchases while charging from more than one account. In some cases, the charges appear on their cell phone bill at the end of the month, or they are instantly deducted from their bank account like a debit card charge. Yet, critics say that American consumers are not ready to use their cell phones as mobile wallets (m-wallets), and cite research from Market Platform Dynamics that showed that in a survey of 4,000 consumers, 62 percent said they do not desire m-wallets. Others believe that using a credit or debit card via an m-wallet will be commonplace in the future in the US.

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Privacyware has upgraded its desktop defense software, Privatefirewall 5.0, a multi-layered endpoint security product. The firm says that the key enhancement in Privatefirewall 5.0 is a system monitoring and anomaly detection component that delivers signature-less protection from viruses and malware and detects cyber criminal attempts to inject malicious code, install rootkits, trojans and spyware, spoof IPs, bypass firewalls and generally gain access, control and/or damage corporate systems. Privatefirewall 5.0 is comprised of several integrated protection layers including desktop firewall, URL filtering, process monitor, and application/system behavior modeling and anomaly detection. Privatefirewall pricing starts at $29.95 per installation and a 30-day free trial is available.

Security experts agree that by default, no device or system on your network is secure. In practice this means that when you first plug in and turn on a device (printers, switches, firewalls, laptops, desktops, servers, networked storage devices, etc.), you must first secure it as the default settings are almost always not secure. For instance, quite a few devices come with Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) installed and running. Unfortunately, the Read and Write security "community" strings for SNMP are often set to the default of public and private, respectively, which represents a fairly serious security hole. The solution: disable SNMP on all your networked devices if you are not using it, or if you are using it, make sure you update the device with the latest patches and or firmware related to SNMP security and make sure you change the community strings from the defaults to something a lot more secure.

When creating a network security plan, some security experts say there are 8 key areas to stay focused on. We will cover them in the upcoming issue of BANK tech-trends - subscribe today and get the full story.

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ONLINE BANKING: 

Expanding the Channel with Convenience and Security

The Boston Consulting Group - http://www.bcg.com   Read Carl Rutstein's comments: http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/BCG.pdf

Corillian - http://www.corillian.com   Read Alex Hart's comments:   http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/Corillian.pdf

Digital Resolve - http://www.digital-resolve.net   Read Dennis Maicon's comments:     http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/DigitalResolve.pdf

Green Armor Solutions - http://www.greenarmor.com   Read Joseph Steinberg's comments:    http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/GreenArmor.pdf

Harland Financial Solutions - http://www.harlandfinancialsolutions.com   Read Peter Nguyen's comments: http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/HFS.pdf

Hewlett-Packard - http://www.hp.com   Read Charles Gowin's comments:     http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/HP.pdf

Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com Read Russ Paul-Jones' comments: http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/Microsoft.pdf

Online Resources Corporation - http://www.orcc.com   Read Stephanie Chaufournier's comments:   http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/ORCC.pdf

Open Solutions - http://www.opensolutions.com   Read Michael D. Nicastro's comments: http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/OSI.pdf

ProfitStars - http://www.manageforperformance.com   Read David Foss' comments:   http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/ProfitStars.pdf

TriCipher - http://www.tricipher.com   Read Sally Sheward's comments:   http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/TriCipher.pdf

uMonitor - http://www.umonitor.com   Read Dinesh Sheth's comments:   http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/uMonitor.pdf

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With nearly 80 million Baby Boomers entering their retirement years in the next three decades, bank marketing departments are going to need to focus their efforts on serving their changing needs. Retirement and financial planning solutions are two items that are near the top of this list. Some banks are already running ongoing educational seminars on estates, trusts, and retirement planning, while others are offering some form of free financial planning. Other areas to consider: supplemental retirement vehicles, on-line brokerage and investment service partnerships, and customer reward programs that are structured to encourage savings.

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The latest forecasts from research consultancy Aite Group show that by 2010 13% of current accounts will be opened online in the US, compared to just three per cent in 2006. Gwenn Bézard, a research director with Aite Group, said that "beyond mastering the account opening process, financial institutions will need to become considerably more effective with online marketing." This entails using customer data to conduct targeted online and multi-channel marketing campaigns.

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Internet Access

For those banks considering a VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) implementation, but concerned about the degradation in quality of the call, a new study released by Minacom reveals that VoIP phone service actually sounds better and connects faster than the standard public-switched phones network (PSTN). Minacom spent the last 12 months collecting data using their standards-based, single-ended service quality test system. Minacom's sophisticated PowerProbe 6000 IVR Test Agent measures a wide range of analog and IP impairments, such as noise, echo, delay, packet loss, call volume, jitter and loss; in addition to a complete array of connectivity metrics including Post Dial Delay (PDD), Answer Seizure Ratio (ASR) and Dial-Tone Delay (DTD). Minacom claims that their study shows the steady progress VoIP is making as a viable replacement communications technology for traditional public-switched wireline service.

While Caller ID is handy, it can be easily spoofed. Two ways that it can be done are by using modern PBX software, such as the open-source Asterisk system, or via Spoofcard which is a pre-paid calling card that permits you to tell it not only the number to call, but the number to display on Caller ID. Analyst group Ferris Research is warning that financial institutions need to be aware that Caller ID spoofing works in two negative ways that can impact them:

- Scam artists can call bank customers, pretending to be the bank, trying to steal passwords and other information.
- Scam artists can call the bank, pretending to be the customer, trying to change addresses, passwords and other credentials.

The problem is that telephony is ripe for new fraud-friendly technologies. This is especially true because while consumers are quite aware of computer fraud, they are not quite as aware that the telephone offers many new opportunities for fraudulent activities.

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Call Centers

Verizon Business recently introduced a set of new IP-based capabilities for its contact center services and VoIP suite to help organizations integrate VoIP features into their call centers. The new capabilities are IP Tollfree Service, IP IVR (an interactive voice response system for contact center services) and new IP Trunking options, all featuring interoperability with Avaya enterprise communications software. The new Verizon IP Tollfree feature routes incoming toll-free calls over IP and supports multiple-contact media, such as phone calls, e-mail or instant messaging (IM).

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