BANK tech-trends News
 

December 14, 2009 - December 18, 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

Desktop sales have been declining for years, and the biggest trend in desktops is smaller form factors. Case in point: Dell’s OptiPlex 780 USFF (ultra small form factor), which starts at $629, is designed to take on similar offerings from HP and Lenovo. Dell also unveiled the OptiPlex 380. The OptiPlex 780 USFF weighs in at just 7 pounds is 9.4 inches high, 2.6 inches wide with a 9.3 inch diameter.

Seagate's first entry into solid state drives is the new Pulsar drive, which is designed for blade computers and general server applications and offers up to 200 gigabytes of capacity based on the Serial ATA interface. Pulsar drives achieve a peak performance of up to 30,000 read IOPS (or input/output operations per second) and 25,000 write IOPS, Seagate says, many times the performance of even the fastest hard disk drives.

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ATMs/Kiosks

Hypercom is targeting financial institutions with their Optimum T4200 payment terminals. The Mini-ATMs, which can be installed in branches or at participating retail locations, enable consumers to complete more than 100 types of transactions, including paying bills ranging from utility, insurance and credit card bills, and purchasing goods and services, such as airline tickets and mobile phone pre-paid vouchers.

Another company called Cities in Touch (CIT) offers an ATM and debit card issuing kiosk system. CIT's kiosk systems house an ATM and provide bill payment, wire transfers, check cashing, payday advance, prepaid phone, wireless PIN, wireless recharge, prepaid debit cards and advertising, all via a touch screen monitor.

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Looking ahead to 2010, Unisys predicts that government and commercial organizations will take a more proactive approach to security, implementing new measures to verify identity and protect confidential information. Financial institutions and defense agencies will lead the charge, with ports and other organizations quickly following. Unisys believes that the coming year will see a tipping point in use of biometric identification tools such as iris, facial or fingerprint scans, and that mobile biometric devices will allow governments to take more biometric-based critical services directly to their citizens, rather than requiring their citizens to come to the technology.

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Security researchers from SMobile Systems have released a paper detailing successful man-in-the-middle attacks against several smartphones. The SSL-enabled log in sessions on the tested, Nokia N95, HTC Tilt, Android G1 and iPhone 3GS, devices were sniffed using the publicly available SSLstrip tool, with the attack taking place over an insecure Wi-Fi network. SMobile Systems warns smartphone users to approach convenient and free public Wi-Fi networks with caution, and emphasizes that your mobile service provider’s 3G connection, or the one offered by a trusted Wi-Fi network should always be considered as your first choice - especially for mobile banking access.

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According to results from NSS Labs, an independent testing organization, intrusion prevention systems (IPSes) products are nearly 50 percent less effective at catching threats if left with their default settings, and some operate at only about half of their promised throughput. NSS Labs tested the IPSes with their default settings and then allowed the manufacturers to configure their devices. They found that you can get up to 44% better protection by tuning it, and on average, you get 18% better protection. NSS discovered that attacks that employ evasion and obfuscation often fool IPSes, and only two vendors' IPS products were able to detect all attacks that tried to mask their true intentions. As for performance, NSS Labs found that vendors overstate their throughput anywhere from 12 to 50 percent. In reality, that means that a 1-gigabit speed IPS may be passing only 600 megabits of traffic, and the rest may pass through uninspected. NSS Labs tested the Cisco IPS 4260 Sensor, IBM Proventia Network IPS GX4004, IBM Proventia Network IPS GX6116, Juniper Networks IDP-250, Juniper Networks IDP-600c, Juniper Networks IDP-800, McAfee M-1250, McAfee M-8000, Sourcefire 3D 4500, Stonesoft StoneGate IPS-1030, Stonesoft StoneGate IPS-1060, Stonesoft StoneGate IPS-6105, TippingPoint 10 IPS, TippingPoint 660N IPS, and TippingPoint 2500N IPS.

Domain registration fraud is a catch-all term to describe types of fraud connected with the registration of Internet domain names. One common scheme is the bogus renewal approach. Scam artists look in whois databases to find domains that will soon be up for renewal and send an official-looking invoice to the domain's billing contact. The hope is that the recipient won't notice that the invoice isn't from their actual domain registrar and will blindly pay it.

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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 First Data, customership in credit card rewards program is declining – from 71% of the consumers surveyed by the transaction processor in 2008, to 67% this year. Meanwhile, debit rewards participation increased significantly, from 34% of consumers surveyed in 2008 to 45% this year. To drive debit card use, some issuers are offering more generous rewards in exchange for an annual fee. Meanwhile other issuers are increasingly partnering with retailers to offer discounts or rewards that are far more generous than their regular rewards. Other programs are extended to allow customers to earn a fixed number of points per month based on the number and type of accounts they have with the bank. Unfortunately, rewards programs are not inexpensive; according to First Data on average, a bank spends $20 to $25 per customer each year for a debit rewards program which includes all costs associated with technology, marketing, support and redemptions.

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Veritec, a developer of mobile banking debit card solutions, announced it is rolling out a Visa branded multi-purpose card. It will have Veritec's proprietary VSCode on the back of the card. VSCode is a secure data storage container that holds several thousand bytes of data. The company says that having the VSCode on the back of the prepaid card will enable issuers to use it as a multi-purpose financial and secure ID card.

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Cisco is making a big push for the SMB market by offering a new line of Linux-based routers, promising easier configuration and administration. Cisco will be phasing out the Linksys brand in favor of products branded as Cisco Small Business and Cisco Small Business Pro. Analysts say that the new SMB offering by Cisco aims for the middle ground in terms of easy configuration and stronger security.

ABI Research has released its latest Vendor Matrix and in it they rank Avaya as the top unified communications vendor. The Vendor Matrix is an analytical tool and is a part of ABI Research’s Enterprise Communications Research Service. As per their analysis, IBM and Siemens Enterprise networks were positioned at the second and third spots.

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IVR systems provider, Angel.com has released a “cheat sheet” for organizations looking to improve their IVRs. The company says that first and foremost, you should always consider your IVR system a ‘work in progress’ that should be continuously monitored to provide the best service. To start, Angel.com suggests letting callers know what to expect from the system immediately by presenting a pleasant greeting and explain what the system can, and will, do for the caller. They recommend never hiding the option for a caller to speak with a live agent. Other recommendations include:

- let the caller know their estimated wait time for a live agent
- don't ask the same questions twice - use screen pops to inform agents
- provide callers with an option to navigate the system using a touch-tone or speech recognition

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