BANK tech-trends News
 

October 26, 2009 - October 30, 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

Hardware News

Despite an improving economy, companies aren't moving quickly to replace servers, PCs and printers, which will likely cause an increase in failure rates over the next two years, according to Gartner. As a result of putting off new hardware purchases, the research firm says that IT operations "are going to have to start to plan for the impact of increased equipment failure rates."

Cisco unveiled the new generation of its Integrated Services Router which is a branch office platform optimized for video and virtualized services and is the cornerstone of a new Cisco architecture called Borderless Network. Borderless Network is a five-phase plan to deliver services and applications to anyone anywhere, regardless of device or network technology. The routers also enable organizations to better manage their power consumption and costs through switch modules that include the company's EnergyWise software for power efficiency. EnergyWise debuted early this year for Cisco's Catalyst LAN switches to allow users to be able to control Power over Ethernet-connected devices and track energy consumption. The ISR G2 1900 starts at $1,595; the 2900 at $1,995; and the 3900 at $9,500.

Are you tired of fishing around for unplugged cables that have fallen behind your desk? Then you may want to consider picking up BlueLounge's CableDrop clips which can be mounted on a desk or wall and they'll keep your unused power cords or other peripheral cords in place until you need them. They run $10 for a pack of six.

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ATMs/Kiosks

Diebold has released ValiTech which is a two-factor authentication technology that uses a secure USB device to identify and authorize technicians who service ATMs. Engineered in-house by Diebold, the drive provides authorized Diebold service personnel with secure access to the system level of the ATM. This technology not only delivers an additional layer of protection for banks through access control, it also provides a detailed audit trail. ValiTech links each authorized service technician to a USB hardware cryptographic device - or token - using a digital certificate from VeriSign.

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Windows 7 is the first operating system from Microsoft to have biometrics as part of the core package. The way it works is that any fingerprint reader or other biometric tool simply has to conform to the WBF. This should quickly eliminate incompatible middleware problems that have caused issues in the past for IT Departments trying to increase network security by using biometrics.

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Javelin Strategy & Research issued a new report that reveals that financial institutions’ marketing efforts are not keeping pace with their actual mobile banking services, and the imbalance is causing limited adoption of mobile banking by consumers. Key Findings of the Javelin 2009 U.S. Mobile Banking Benchmark Scorecard are:

- No institutions currently allow unique mobile enrollment or opening of accounts via mobile channels.
- Marketing positioning and placement need further work: 17 percent of financial institutions have poor accessibility to mobile offerings.
- Half of the institutions analyzed provided sufficient security messaging on their website but 17 percent included no mention of security despite this being one of the strongest factors preventing consumers from adopting mobile banking.
- Within five years, 45 percent of adults with mobile phones will use mobile banking (54 percent of iPhone users already use mobile banking on a monthly basis.)

MoadBus, Inc., a global provider of financial software and services, announced the release of its mobile banking solution, MBanking, with Quad-Mode technology: encrypted SMS, standard SMS, mobile browser and a downloadable application, within a single solution. MBanking offers a wide range of functionality including: actionable alerts, bill payments, loan and credit card payments, balance and history inquiries, internal and external bank transfers, wire transfers, stop payments, an ATM and Branch locator, as well as touch screen and touch-less navigation with integrated Text to Speech (TTS) capability.

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According to Treasury Strategies, losses caused by massive fraud could bring down as many as 10 financial institutions within the next three years. The Chicago-based consultancy says small institutions are most at risk of failure from fraud, since they generally lack the tools to detect and combat fraudulent transactions and don’t have the capital base to absorb losses. However, the firm warns that even some mid-size and regional institutions could shut their doors. They say that the recession has caused many institutions to cut back on spending on fraud detection tools, and there is no going to be much spending on anti-fraud technology for the next 12 to 18 months.

In an effort to protect databases, Sentrigo puts a small "sensor" on the database host server to monitor all database transactions moving through shared memory. This sensor communicates with the company's Hedgehog server, which evaluates every action based on a set of rules that you configure or write. You can react in real-time when a rule violation is determined. Depending on the severity of the violation, you can log the event, send an alert, terminate the user's session, and/or lock out the user for a period of time. According to Sentrigo, the sensor adds minimal overhead to the database performance - about 1% to 2% of CPU usage.

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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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According to industry analyst Mike Moebs, nearly 45 percent of community FIs have overdraft revenue greater than net income. The solution, he says, is for FIs to charge more fees, but to spread them out across product portfolios and make them transparent so that regulators don't have reason to intervene on consumers' behalf. That would be difficult in the current economic climate, Moebs acknowledges, but says it's crucial to future profits.

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The Aite Group has issued a report saying that while adoption of online bill pay is still growing, the rate of increase is slowing. Bill pay vendors need to get serious about innovations if they want to reinvigorate growth rates, according to Aite. The number of U.S. financial institutions offering online bill pay in the first half of 2009 was up to 9,190 compared with 6,735 in 2006. The Boston-based research firm predicts that transactions will hit 2.07 billion this year, up only 8.9% from 1.90 billion in 2008. Last year transactions grew 13.1% from 1.68 billion in 2007.

The online banking Trojan Clampi continues to cause problems for online business bankers worldwide. For instance, criminals have stolen more than $479,000 from a Pennsylvania housing development authority after infecting one of its computers with Clampi. Once installed, Clampi captures passwords which were used to transfer the money to accounts set up by the scammers at 11 different financial institutions. Concern over the upsurge in cybercrime has moved the UK-based Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center to recommend that commercial online bankers should be induced to "carry out all online activity from a standalone, hardened and locked-down computer from which e-mail and Web browsing is not possible".

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Smaller organizations can now buy open source IP PBX Asterisk software as an add-on to IBM’s Smart Cube office-in-a-box package. Digium, which sells a commercial version of Asterisk, customized it to integrate with Smart Cube’s software, making the phone system manageable via Smart Cube’s management interface. Customers buy the Asterisk application from IBM’s Smart Market, and rely on IBM for support. Digium support staff is on call to IBM for tier 2 support, but customers only have to deal with IBM. The PBX software is sold in two sizes, for 20 concurrent calls ($2,000) and for 40 concurrent calls ($4,000).

According to a survey by Frost & Sullivan, business and IT managers found that their organizations got back benefits perceived as equal to four times their investment, on average, in unified communication and collaboration technologies. The online survey looked at deployments of networking tools including voice over IP phones, videoconferencing and instant messaging to support distributed work forces and teleworkers in 10 countries. The range of unified communications and collaboration tools included in the survey was broad, but generally audio- and Web- conferencing tools provided the greatest benefits to companies, followed by videoconferencing (sometimes at the desktop instead of in a room-sized location), and then instant messaging, wikis and blogs.

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More and more banks are recording all incoming or outgoing calls within their contact center environment, both for regulatory concerns and for customer service quality control. Coordinated Systems is one well established vendor that is targeting banks with their flagship call recording suite, Virtual Observer. A quality feature set enables contact center staff to use integrated evaluation and e-learning tools for training purposes, plus Virtual Observer offers a “Data Defender” feature which helps organizations comply with specific credit card processing guidelines by securing a caller’s information and sensitive data with 256-bit media encryption.

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