BANK tech-trends News
 

October 12, 2009 - October 16, 2009

• 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

Super Talent and Toshiba announced a new SSD line, dubbed the UltraDrive DX, that is designed for reliability and security. The first level of security for the UltraDrive DX is an encrypted password, while the second level of protection the DX incorporates is new hardware data randomization technology, which happens automatically with every write to the drive to prevent unauthorized copying of blocks of data. The companies claim that hardware data randomization does not affect the drive's performance, which is quoted at sequential read speeds of up to 230 MB/sec and sequential write speeds of up to 180 MB/sec.

Dell has added the Vostro 430 mini tower desktop to its lineup which is intended for small and medium businesses. The Vostro 430 can accommodate up to 16GB of DDR3 SDRAM and up to 2TB of internal storage (two 1TB drives). It comes with pre-installed video conferencing software, dual display and multi-touch support (thanks to Windows 7), Intel Core i5 or i7 processors, and discrete graphics from NVIDIA and ATI. Outside, it features 10 external USB ports and four total PCI/PCIe expansion slots, as well as a 19-in-1 card reader and PS/2 and serial ports for older devices.

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ATM cash withdrawal limits appear to run the gamut from a few hundred to thousands of dollars per day. Some banks will vary the amount based on individual requests, and some may allow a seasonal variance, while others have a set limit and won't vary it at all. Whatever policy the bank sets, it is critical to properly disclose any limitations that are imposed.

A new cash-accepting terminal, coined the ‘reverse ATM’, is being rolled out in Portland, OR. The POWR, Point of Wealth Register, is designed to cater to workers who have cash and are ‘under-banked’ or ‘unbanked.’ Deposits can be made to a checking or savings account, or they can be used to pay a utility bill. Money also can be added to prepaid debit cards or can be donated to a local charity.

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Safelock was one of the winning entries in the UIST 2009 Student Innovation Competition, a Microsoft-sponsored contest aimed at inspiring keyboard innovation. Safelock, by Jeff Allen and John Howard of Southern Methodist University, biometrically authenticates a user with just eight characters entered. To create a machine-learning algorithm that discovers the unique way each person types, the team measured four keystroke attributes: flight time (the interval between each keystroke); hold time (the amount of time the key was held); maximum pressure; and a curve fit to the pressure over time as a user pressed each key.

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An Adeptra survey of US consumers has found that the majority of US consumers want their credit card issuer to call them on their cell phones to alert them of possible suspicious transactions. When asked how they would like issuers to contact them to flag a potential fraudulent transaction and check its legitimacy, the majority of consumers said they would prefer to be contacted by a call to their cell phone with more than half (54%) saying this was their preferred channel of contact. A fifth of respondents (20%) said they would prefer to be contacted by a call to their landline telephone, and a fifth (20%) opted for email notification. Six percent said they would prefer contact by cell phone text/SMS.

According to a survey commissioned by VeriSign, American financial institutions should mine the untapped market of offline consumers as a potential target audience for mobile banking and payment services. Until now, FIs have been focused on moving consumers from the online to mobile channel, says VeriSign, which partnered with Fiserv and M-Com on the survey. Adam Clark, CEO, M-Com, says: "Mobile banking is by far the lowest cost non-online banking channel available today, at an estimated eight cents a transaction. If you compare that to other banking channels such as call center at $3.75 and IVR at $1.25 or even ATM at 85 cents, you can see how moving consumers to mobile banking will yield significant cost savings."

Safe mobile banking practices include using a PIN or a password to lock your phone as a first option. Next are remote wipe options that let you clear the contents of your phone if you should ever lose it. You can remote wipe BlackBerrys and iPhones (if you pay for the MobileMe service), and some programs such as Kaspersky Mobile Security offer the feature for phones running Symbian OS or Windows Mobile. Finally, there are SMS messages which may be the least secure option, but can provide some security when large or unusual transactions take place.

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The Anti Phishing Working Group's (APWG) latest report shows that rogue anti-malware programs, infected computers and crimeware broke new records in the first half of 2009. One disturbing trend is the attacks that target CFOs and then attempt to take over the corporation's online banking credentials to make corporate wire transfers. Meanwhile, the number of banking trojan/password-stealing crimeware infections detected increased more than 186 percent. "New malicious software such as the Zeus trojan exhibit a level of sophistication that would make the best software programmers envious," the report noted.

According to a new survey by Actimize, nearly 80 percent of financial institutions worldwide say the insider threat problem has increased in the wake of the economic downturn. Nearly 70 percent of financial institutions say their full time employees are most likely to pose an insider fraud threat, versus 10 percent of part timers, 8 percent of outsourced workers, 6 percent of temporary workers, and 5 percent of offshore employees, according to the survey. Nearly 60 percent of the respondents in the survey ranked tellers and traders as the highest risk of insider fraud, followed by administrative/back office (55%), technology (34%), executive/senior management (29%), call center (29%), and line of business (26%) employees.

Instant messaging vendor FaceTime has released a secure Web gateway for enterprises seeking to monitor employee content posted to blogs, wikis, webmail and social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. FaceTime's Unified Security Gateway (USG) 3.0 combines content monitoring, management and security of Web 2.0 applications, with URL filtering, malware and web anti-virus protection.

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Core Systems:

Helping Banks Focus on Opportunities

Fidelity Information Services - http://www.fidelityinfoservices.com   Read Anthony Jabbour's comments:   http://www.banktt.com/roundtable/FIS.pdf

Fiserv - http://www.fiserv.com Read Fiserv's comments: http://www.banktt.com/roundtable/Fiserv.pdf

Fiserv - http://www.opensolutions.com Read David Mitchell's comments: http://www.banktt.com/roundtable/OSI.pdf

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Overdraft fees are increasingly coming under scrutiny from the government and consumer groups. Some analysts believe that the challenge for many banks will be to develop new and innovative fee-generating products that can offset any fee losses from overdrafts. One fee generating service is same-day expedited payments, which can be integrated directly into the online bill payment system. There is also transactional revenue opportunity with A2A - account to account money transfer services. Meanwhile, some analysts think that the primary source of fee income to partially replace NSF/OD fees comes from increased debit card interchange fees, and they are convinced that banks must put in place meaningful incentives to influence their customers to use their debit cards more often.

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A new report from Aite Group analyzes U.S. small-business adoption of online banking capabilities and finds that financial institutions are missing opportunities to deepen their relationships with this important segment and generate additional fee-based revenues by failing to offer the right online capabilities. The research firm recommends that banks focus on: (1) enhancing their cash management offerings, (2) offering new capabilities to improve the efficiency of accounts receivables and accounts payables, (3) more effectively bundling online products for small-business sub-segments and (4) increasing convenience.

Fiserv announced an integrated strategy for online business banking services. As part of the new approach, all of the company’s products designed for the online business banking user will be managed under a single umbrella. To execute the new strategy, a dedicated team of associates has been created at Fiserv which is led by Dan Nagy, senior vice president and general manager of Business Services.

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According to a recent survey by CIO magazine, productivity gains and improved response time are among the greatest benefits of unified communications (UC). Ease of use (79 percent) is overwhelmingly cited as a critical factor when deciding to implement unified communications solutions followed by ROI (57 percent), level of service (54 percent) and price (51 percent). IT buyers most frequently cite unified messaging (47 percent), desktop videoconferencing (46 percent) and telepresence technology (45%) as technologies they are actively researching.

To help uncover the top 5 myths keeping smaller organizations from making the switch away from their old phone systems, business VoIP provider Nextiva has written a new white paper, “5 Myths that Keep Small Business Hooked on Old Phone Systems.” The company’s affordable hosted VoIP service, Connect360, starts at just around $20 a month and includes IVR, voicemail, dial-by-name, call transfer, find me/ follow me, and a host of other features.

Sprint Nextel has announced general availability of its SIP Trunking service for businesses. Sprint SIP Trunking leverages the Sprint Global MPLS network by using a single IP connection to facilitate the convergence of voice, data and video communication. Sprint says that the service eliminates the costly local trunks an organization would need to purchase from local telephone companies and allows them to share capacity over one IP connection for multiple locations and applications.

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Plantronics has introduced a new device for the contact center which allows an agent’s headset to be connected directly to the network the same as any other SIP endpoint. The IP40 effectively eliminates the need for a desk phone as well as the need to have the PC process voice. The plug-and-play device offers dual Ethernet ports, and is powered by standard 802.3af Power over Ethernet. It provides control features such as transmit mute, receive volume adjust, and call answer/end button with a remotely configurable auto-answer option. Other features include presence-based automatic hold when the headset is detached using the QuickDisconnect feature.

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