BANK tech-trends News
 

December 27, 2010 - December 31, 2010

• Hardware News
• Software Updates
• ATMs/Kiosks
• Wireless World
• Security Section
• Leaders Roundtable
• Technology and Marketing
• Online Banking/E-Commerce/
  Website Design
• Internet Access
• Call Centers

Complimentary Webinar

Maintaining Telecommunications & Meeting Auditor Requirements

It can be extremely difficult to maintain telecommunications with your staff and customers after a disaster. This point is evidenced by the fact that the Post-Katrina reports from all of the governmental agencies regulating financial institutions placed restoring communications quickly at the top of their lists. The FFIEC reports said that banks must:

"Anticipate disruptions in communications services, possibly for extended periods of time." 

The report also noted that "communications outages made it difficult to locate missing personnel." 

Therefore banks must develop affordable ways to quickly restore their telecommunications infrastructure. This complimentary Webinar will demonstrate how your bank can be prepared for telecom disasters without having a telecom person on staff or spending thousands of dollars on redundant phone systems.
 

What You Will Learn:

- How to inexpensively satisfy telecom disaster requirements
- How to show auditors that you can provide a backup telecom system with just 1 phone call
- How you can successfully answer every telecom disaster preparedness questionnaire on the auditor's forms.

BONUS: Every attendee will receive a sample Telecommunications Disaster Recovery Plan.

Who Should Attend:

IT staff, telecom staff, Audit and Compliance personnel, Managers, and anyone interested in maintaining telecommunications.


Date: Schedule a 30-minute live demonstration at your convenience that could one day save your business. If this isn't the easiest to use, most affordable, and most powerful inbound telecom disaster recovery system that you have ever seen, we will send you a free gift - seeing is believing!

To Register: http://www.banktt.com/webinars.htm  

Costs: Free

~ This Week's News is Sponsored by MARQUIS Software Solutions ~

Please contact John Kassing @ johnk@gomarquis.com, or call 800-365-4274 to learn more about MCIF, referral tracking or CRM solutions that you can and will actually use!

Hardware News

ADTRAN entered the unified threat management market with the introduction of a family of appliances it’s selling under the NetVanta brand. The purpose-built appliances, which leverage technology from SonicWALL, offer one-year Continuous Threat Protection, SSL and IPSec VPN clients, anti-virus and anti-spyware clients. The NetVanta 2630, list priced at $1,055, is the low end model, while the NetVanta 2830, list priced at $3,965, is the high end box targeted at larger organizations that need high performance, scalability and more VPN tunnels.

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ATMs/Kiosks

GRG International announced that it is launching a new marketing program in the United States to help banks comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). GRG said its new series of ATMs are fully ADA compliant. Most major U.S. processor networks also have certified the newest model GRG ATMs for use. When you purchase a GRG ATM with a three-year parts warranty, the package includes ADA-compliant local text-to-speech software and GRG "Tool Plus" diagnostic software.

According to many industry experts, the Federal Reserve Board's proposed rule that would establish debit card interchange fee standards will not affect ATM interchange. For example, Mike Lee, CEO of the ATM Industry Association (ATMIA), noted that "the regulation of debit interchange under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act expressly excludes ATM interchange of the proposed rules."

What is being called the first gold-dispensing ATM in the U.S. began accepting transactions last week at the Town Center mall in Boca Raton, FL. Buyers can purchase four weights of Swiss gold bullion bars and two weights of U.S.-minted gold coins. Florida-based PMX Gold LLC brought the machine, which was developed by Germany’s Ex Oriente Lux AG, to the U.S. and seeks to place others in more U.S. locations.

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Luottokunta eMobile is a new payment service based on a security model where authentication is done as a cloud service via an "unforgeable fingerprint" that is created for each transaction. Microsoft is working with them because they say that this new authentication service allows for mobile payments from any mobile phone and via any operator, using iSMS. With iSMS, the system is entirely within the network, and no separate certificates or mobile wallets are necessary. The payment method can be any card registered for the service by the consumer.

iPhone mobile banking apps flourished in 2010 as evidenced by their 40-fold growth. At the end of 2009, there were only 30 financial institutions that had apps in the U.S. iTunes App Store. Now at the end of 2010, total financial institution app-count has surpassed 1,200.

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Current banknotes include as many as 50 anti-counterfeiting features, yet counterfeiting remains as popular as ever across the globe. In an effort to make cash more secure, a team of German and Japanese researchers are working on a way to insert electronic circuits into banknotes. Their goal is to have the circuits act as both an anti-counterfeiting measure and as a way to track the flow of cash.

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Core Systems:

Helping with Regulatory Issues and Compliance Pressures

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

Harland Financial Solutions - http://www.harlandfinancialsolutions.com   Read Jennifer Robert's comments:   http://www.banktt.com/roundtable/HFS.pdf

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

Software Management Associates - http://www.smausa.com   Read Michael W. Taylor's comments:   http://www.banktt.com/roundtable/SMA.pdf

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According to Forrester Research’s annual North American Technographics Benchmark Survey, the average American consumer now spends as much time online as watching television. While Gen Yers (ages 18-30) already spend more time on the Web than watching TV, their survey found that this was the first year that Gen X (ages 31-44) and younger Boomers (ages 45-54) now spend an equal time with both media. Meanwhile on the mobile front, Forrester’s research revealed that:

- 61% report texting on a monthly basis
- 52% use their mobile phones for directions and maps
- 25% access e-mail via mobile
- only about 7% said they used mobile devices for financial purposes in 2010, but that is almost double the year before

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According to new projections from Javelin Strategy & Research, credit cards will continue to dominate online payments for at least the next five years, but they will lose share to debit cards, alternative payments, and prepaid and gift cards. In their “2010 Online Retail Payments Update and Forecast” report, Javelin predicts the following usage in 2015:

- 37% for credit cards
- 28% for debit cards
- 20% for PayPal and other online alternative payment providers
- 11% for prepaid and gift cards

In a move that will save Social Security $1 billion, the U.S. Treasury Department will phase out paper checks for federal benefit payments. The final rule calls for anyone applying for benefits on or after May 1, 2011, to receive their payments electronically. Those who have been receiving paper checks will have until March 1, 2013, to set up an account to which their benefits may be direct deposited.

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Hughes Network Systems announced the availability of new managed services suite for organizations that want to integrate voice, data and video over affordable broadband. Hughes claims that their ActiveQoS is a new network optimization technology that enables 'MPLS-like' performance over high-speed, affordable DSL and cable broadband connections. ActiveQoS is able to see through real-time latency sensitive apps such as heavy voice and video data streams by utilizing several optimization methods that facilitate it to adapt to traffic demands.

High-speed Internet is the technology that has had the greatest impact on society and the one that people say they can't live without, according to survey results from Zogby Interactive. Zogby's study found that 28 percent of those polled tagged broadband Internet as the one technology they can't live without; e-mail came in second at 18 percent. Facebook was lower on the overall list at only 3 percent, but among the younger crowd (18-24), 15 percent said they can't live without Facebook.

ADCs take over where server load balancers leave off

In the last decade, server load balancers were hailed as the solution to website scalability and availability problems. These devices balanced traffic across servers to ensure the site was available and could handle traffic spikes. If one server went down, the load balancer redirected traffic. When a site got "slashdotted" you could add more servers transparently.

Flash forward to 2010; Web servers aren't just delivering static content, they're delivering Apps. Businesses are using Web-based applications to deliver mission critical functionalities to employees and customers. Simple load balancing is no longer sufficient.

Fortunately, load balancers have evolved into Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs). This new species understands application specific traffic and can optimize application server performance by offloading many of the computer intensive tasks that would otherwise bog down CPUs that could be better occupied elsewhere. This article will discuss how ADCs have taken over where server load balancers left off.

Click Here to Download the White Paper "ADCs take over where server load balancers leave off"

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Scheduling agents during the holidays can be challenging. Perhaps the most often used method industry-wide is seniority because it is easy and convenient. But some contact centers use more creative methods: lotteries, volunteer requests, and rotation schedules that help ensure that agents have some of the holidays off during the year. Another option is a point system used in conjunction with a volunteer sign-up sheet. The fewer the number of points, the less likely you are to have to sign up. Each employee is given a balance of 0 points, and points will be added each time an attendance infraction occurs and points will be subtracted when an employee volunteers and completes a shift that they volunteered for or goes above and beyond their job duties.

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