BANK tech-trends News
 

July 14 - July 18, 2008

• 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

Seagate announced first 1.5TB desktop hard drive: the Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB. It utilizes four platters to achieve the 1.5TB or storage and can deliver a sustained data transfer rate of up to 120MB/s. According to Seagate this drive represents the largest increase in storage capacity in the last 50 years, a feat made possible by improvements in perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology.

Sun Microsystems introduced a line of storage arrays called the Sun Storage J4000 series designed for customers ranging from small businesses to large enterprises. The arrays, available now, can cost just $1 per gigabyte for bulk storage, with significant savings resulting from free software, according to Sun. The lineup starts at $3,000 and includes systems with maximum capacities ranging from 46TBs to 480TBs. 

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ATMs/Kiosks

Level Four Americas, a provider of open standards-based ATM software, has released a recent consumer survey conducted by Harris Interactive, which found that 45 percent of U.S. consumers would be likely to switch financial institutions if their FI’s network of ATMs was often unreliable. Additionally, 28 percent of U.S. consumers said they would be “very likely” to switch financial institutions if they experienced recurrent instances of ATM unavailability.

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There is a plan afoot in the United Kingdom for a National ID Card that will also be used to help banks confirm identity when individuals open new accounts or undertake certain higher risk transactions. The plan is for banks to have fingerprint scanners in their branches and to compare new fingerprints with templates held on or with the ID cards of consumers. 

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Alternative payment startup Mpayy is ready to actively promote its combined e-commerce, mobile technology, and automated clearing house offerings. Mpayy is promoting itself as a low-cost alternative to credit cards for online retailers, using the ACH system to avoid payment card interchange fees. The company, which is partially funded by U.S. Bancorp, says that their mobile payment service employs a simple Web interface that "turns your cell phone into a mobile point of sale."

Visa announced significant milestones in the adoption of their contactless technology feature, Visa payWave, which allows cardholders to "wave and go" at payWave merchants. Visa said that it is currently migrating to an enhanced global specification, Visa Contactless 2.0, to further support the growth of Visa payWave. The new global contactless specification is based on the international EMV chip standards, enabling Visa to take advantage of sophisticated cryptographic techniques for Visa payWave transactions, regardless of where the card was issued or where the transaction takes place.

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It seems that the more secure a password appears to be to an IT security professional, the more likely that users will be tempted to write it down. Some research has shown around 40% of workstations apparently have passwords written down somewhere. A company called Tricerion has come up with a solution to the password problem called SafeLogin for Windows Enterprise. The firm uses picture passwords and believes that people are more inclined to recustomer pictures than text. The user is issued a password that comprises a set of images. The number and type of images can be set by the administrator, and Tricerion's picture bank includes 160,000 images. Organizations can decide to use these pictures or provide their own "house style" of images. When presented with a login screen the user selects their pictures on the screen the same way in which they would select numbers or letters in a conventional password login screen. 

Check Point Software Technologies announced the expansion of its UTM-1 Total Security appliance line. The appliances combine firewall, virtual private network (VPN), intrusion prevention, SSL VPN, antivirus, anti-spyware, Web filtering, Web security, and anti-spam into one, centrally managed solution. The new models are: 

- UTM-1 Total Security 1070 featuring 1800 Mbps firewall throughput, three managed sites and six ports 
- UTM-1 Total Security 2070 featuring 2800 Mbps firewall throughput, five managed sites and eight ports 

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Online Banking:

Online Banking... Catering to Your Most Desirable Customers

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

Exstream - http://www.exstream.com   Read Jerry Driscoll's comments:   http://www.banktt.com/roundtable/Exstream.pdf

Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com Read Marley Gray's comments: http://www.banktt.com/roundtable/Microsoft.pdf

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

Piraeus Bank - http://www.piraeusbank.gr   Read Sotiris Sirmakezis' comments: http://www.banktt.com/roundtable/Piraeus.pdf

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

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According to AMR Research, the customer relationship management (CRM) market is experiencing a renaissance of growth "that hasn't been seen since the dotcom boom." Vendors' 2007 CRM revenue totaled more than $14 billion, which was an "impressive" 12 percent growth rate over 2006, according to the research firm. These software vendors own the top 10 spots in CRM market.

1. SAP 
2. Oracle
3. Salesforce.com
4. Cegidim Dendrite 
5. Amdocs 
6. Aspect 
7. Verint Witness Actionable Solutions 
8. Microsoft
9. SAS 
10. Avaya

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Canada ranks number one worldwide in online banking adoption, according to ComScore’s survey of 37 countries. In April 2008, 67 percent of Canadian Internet users banked online, compared to 49 percent in the UK, 44 percent in the U.S. and 41 percent in Australia. ComScore says it sees the greatest potential for growth among light users of online banking services. “These users represent an opportune target for banks seeking new customers,” the Internet usage measurement firm says. 

A company by the name of Torotech has introduced a new “digital DNA mapping” technology designed to protect online banking systems. The firm says that they restrict online access by registering a “fingerprint” of the customer’s home computer, and later when a customer attempts to log on to the system it will compare this digital DNA profile of the computer that is trying to connect against the stored profile of the customer's registered computer. The technology adds digital recognition of one hardware component to the user authentication process, and this can be not only a user’s PC, but also any wired or wireless peripheral such as a USB stick, mobile phone or PDA.

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Internet Access

Microsoft said that it has selected Junction Networks as a preferred SIP trunking and gateway service provider for its Microsoft Response Point small business phone system. According to Microsoft, the SIP-based voice service from Junction Networks is pre-configured in the Response Point Administrator software. Response Point is sold with IP phones from Aastra, D-Link, and Quanta Computer. It features speech recognition, which allows users to perform basic and advanced phone functionality with spoken commands. Junction Networks said that it is offering Response Point customers access to a special promotion that waives the $9.95 monthly service charge, as well as supplies two free phone numbers, one of which is toll-free, for the first 30 days. 

Fonality has come out with a new offering dubbed PSTN-Fallback. They claim that this system offers the best of both worlds: a blend of a low-cost VoIP system coupled with the ultra-reliable PSTN (public switched telephone network). If the VoIP line becomes unreliable, Fonality's PBXtra system defaults back to the client’s regular analog telephone line (PSTN) automatically to ensure that users can always make a call. PBXtra also allows the client to set up the phone system to use VoIP selectively for designated calls, such as those that are intra-office, branch office or international.

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Call Centers

Every call center should do some form of QA (quality assurance). But the question is what is the best quality monitoring form to use and how do you score the calls? Some managers like to divide their calls into two parts: 1) things that should happen in every call. (e.g., opening, close, thaking the caller, etc.) and aspects of the call that depend on the agent's knowledge, experience and effort.(e.g., asking for the sale, linking personal benefits to the needs of the customer). For the first part, the manager can simply mark these as "yes" they occurred or as "no" they didn't. As for the second part, some choose to have three categories: 1) "yes" they did it really well; 2) "coaching required" because there were some things that could have been done better: or 3) "no" they missed it all together. 

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