BANK tech-trends News
 

February 1, 2010 - February 5, 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

Hardware News

IBM announced that the company’s Power7 chip, which is expected to give two to three times the processing power with the same energy consumption, will begin shipping by the end of the first quarter of 2010. Although the best of the new processors will outperform anything made by competitors Intel and AMD, x64 chips from those companies are expected to be comparable in performance to the lower end chips in the Power7 line. The new offerings from IBM are manufactured using a 45 nanometer process and come with four, six, or eight cores.

LaCie has just unveiled three new external hard drives in the brand-new Enterprise Class line: d2 Quadra Enterprise Class, 2big Quadra Enterprise Class and the 4big Quadra Enterprise Class. All three drives include:

- Capacities range from 1 TB to 8 TB
- Internal SATA Enterprise Class disks
- 7200 RPM
- 32 MB of cache memory
- More than 700MB/s of transfer speeds
- 128-bit AES hardware encryption
- A five-year warranty
- 5-year advance product replacement plan

The drives sell at $299 for the d2 Quadra Enterprise Class, $649 for the 2big, and $1,349 for the 4big.

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ATMs/Kiosks

According to Wincor Nixdorf, one-third of a financial institution’s costs come from managing cash. They note that cash continues to be the number one payment medium - nine of ten payment transactions worldwide are made with cash. With its new Cash Cycle Management portfolio, Wincor Nixdorf aims to automate cash handling processes at financial institutions as completely as possible, ensure closed cash cycles and shorten the cash logistics chain. They hope to achieve this by getting banks to deploy a uniform banknote storage concept that enables the exchange of storage media between devices from their new hardware family, CINEO. A memory chip in the storage unit stores information that is available at any time on both the level of cash inside and where and when the unit was used or opened. As a result, cash deposited at a branch's counter and stored in intelligent storage units in an automated teller safe can be dispensed again at an ATM.

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MasterCard reports that more than 66 million PayPass cards had been issued globally at the end of 2009's third quarter, a 50 percent gain from a year earlier. Some observers note that U.S. merchants are keen to deploy contactless payment technology, but consumers' readiness to pay is much lower in the United States compared to other parts of the world. Meanwhile, some in the industry blame the low contactless transaction volume on a low-key marketing strategy - they argue that there is little to no marketing by issuers in most parts of the country, and as a result, there is little usage.

QGen, an outsourced KYC verification provider, has launched a new document submission service via Multimedia Message Service (MMS). The MMS service allows applicants to take a photograph of the required documentation and submit it to QGen for instant verification by QGen's team of fraud analysts. Customers receive an instant SMS acknowledgement once the document has been received and another SMS and email once the documents have been verified. If any of the documents are of insufficient quality, an agent contacts the customer about resubmission.

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According to a new report from privacy and data security research firm Ponemon Institute, the cost of data breaches is $204 per compromised customer record, and breaches resulting from computer hacking incurred by far the highest losses. Some 24% of breaches in 2009 were caused by placement of malware or botnets or related attacks on computer systems, double the 12% rate for such attacks in 2008. Forty percent of 2009’s breaches resulted from negligence, and 36% come from system glitches, according to the “2009 Annual Study: Cost of a Data Breach.”

New PCI rules are cracking down on call centers that handle card data. Call centers asking for card details over the phone must now dispose of those recordings, or at least the parts that store the prohibited data, immediately because PCI rules treat a digital audio capture exactly the same as if it was written. The PCI ruling that such data cannot be retained can be accomplished three different ways: not recording such calls; transferring the caller to another system for the card data to be shared; and splitting the recording into sensitive and not-so-sensitive portions.

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Security:

Managing Risk and Security Efficiently and Affordably

Cyveillance - http://www.cyveillance.com Read James Brooks' comments: http://www.banktt.com/Cyveillance.pdf

e-DMZ Security - http://www.e-dmzsecurity.com   Read Kris Zupan's comments:   http://www.banktt.com/e-DMZ.pdf

Guardian Analytics - http://www.guardiananalytics.com Read Terry Austin's comments:     http://www.banktt.com/Guardian.pdf

HEIT - http://www.goheit.com   Read Dan Holt's comments:   http://www.banktt.com/Heit.pdf

Harland Financial Solutions - http://www.harlandfinancialsolutions.com Read Jeff Marshall's comments: http://www.banktt.com/HFS.pdf

Hyland Software - http://www.onbase.com Read Steve Comer's comments: http://www.banktt.com/Hyland.pdf

Innovative Strategic Solutions - http://www.issone.com Read Jon Rhodes' comments: http://www.banktt.com/ISS.pdf

Millennial Vision - http://www.mviusa.com Read Scott Cowan's comments: http://www.banktt.com/MVI.pdf

Network Box - http://www.networkboxusa.com   Read Pierluigi Stella's comments:   http://www.banktt.com/NetworkBox.pdf

Ongoing Operations - http://www.ongoingoperations.com   Read Kirk Drake's comments:   http://www.banktt.com/OGO.pdf

Perimeter E-Security - http://www.perimeterusa.com   Read Kevin Prince's comments:   http://www.banktt.com/Perimeter.pdf

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

Trusteer - http://www.trusteer.com   Read Rakesh Loonkar's comments:   http://www.banktt.com/Trusteer.pdf

WhiteHat Security - http://www.whitehatsec.com   Read Anurag Agarwal's comments:   http://www.banktt.com/WhiteHat.pdf

Xceedium - http://www.xceedium.com   Read Cheryl Traverse's comments:   http://www.banktt.com/Xceedium.pdf

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Marketing Software Solutions announced the U.S. release of FLEX, an online content management program incorporating form generation and e-signature tools designed for banks. FLEX allows for personalized delivery of sales and marketing material and products, based on client-driven process rules and individual customer profiles and combines this ability with e-signature and online execution. Customer/channel behavior is monitored in real time and campaign messages are tailored and adjusted automatically in response to customer interest.

Profitability Referral Tracking Full-Contact CRM

MCIF CRA/HMDA Compliance

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A report released by Forrester Consulting finds that 75% of online financial services consumers expect 99% or higher website availability. In fact, website performance is second only to security in user expectations. More than half of online banking users (56%) expect web pages to load in two seconds or less, which is significantly more than the 47% of consumers who just shop online. Website performance ranks above even functions like single sign-on or ease of use. The ultimate effect of poor performance is a decrease in willingness to recommend a firm with 48% of online banking users stating that poor performance "impacted" or "significantly impacted" their likeliness to recommend a firm's services to a friend or family member.

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Verizon is now offering their VoIP Inbound with Local Originations service which provides a local phone number with call manager functionality traditionally used for toll free phone numbers. Verizon says that this service is a cost efficient alternative to remote call forwarding, and integrates with Verizon IP Interactive Voice Response (IVR) offerings and can deliver calls to either traditional or IP-based contact centers.

Asterisk released a new version of Switchvox designed for small to midsize businesses (SMB) with its Switchvox SMB 4.5. Based on Digium's Asterisk, the SMB version integrates a Web interface with UC features such as fax, chat and video calling - along with extending interoperability to Polycom phone handsets so features that were previously only available through the Web interface can now use phone handset displays.

F5 Networks has added a new customer to its Big-IP application delivery family that combines SSL VPN security with existing access control and WAN optimization, enabling organizations to eliminate VPN gateways. F5 says that with their Big-IP Edge Gateway, individual computers can connect to corporate networks securely and at the same time have the protected traffic optimized to account for network conditions, protocol inefficiencies and application chattiness. The new Big-IP combines the SSL VPN functionality of F5's Firepass appliances, and makes it possible for organizations to eliminate one appliance - SSL VPN gateway - at the edge of their networks. The base listing price for Edge Gateway 1600 is $17,995, supporting 300 users.

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Call center supervisors use various formulas for measuring call quality - some start with a score of 0 and add, while others start the assessment with a score of 100% and reduce scores as elements are missed. Proponents of the first approach believe that this method of measuring skills, knowledge and behavior more positively positions QA monitoring as a developmental/learning experience. They think that starting with 100% score and then deducting for errors sends the message to staff that quality monitoring is a "punitive" exercise. Others prefer the 100% starting method because it gives agents the expectation that they will successfully cover all of the important quality components right from the start.

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