BANK tech-trends News
 

August 9, 2010 - August 13, 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 ~

Profitability Referral Tracking Full-Contact CRM

MCIF CRA/HMDA Compliance

MARQUIS delivers proven solution to over 750 financial institutions worldwide that are truly Easy, Complete, and Affordable. 

 

What the nation’s leading consultants are saying about Marquis!

“I was absolutely blown away the first time I saw ReferralTrax. Its sheer simplicity of operation masks an unbelievably sophisticated CRM engine that has no rival in the commercial marketplace. ReferralTrax chops the competition off at the knees…”

Randall Putala
SDMI

“Marquis is consistently listed by my clients as the best in class for MCIF software, support and service. I recommend Marquis to any marketing department looking for robust functionality in an MCIF - backed by world-class service.”

Constance Anderson
Consultant/Speaker

“The folks at Marquis truly know what they're doing! And, they are a class act."

Mike Neill
Michael Neill & Associates

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

The Lantronix SpiderDuo KVM (keyboard video mouse) device features remote media mounting, remote power reset, and fast screen refreshes. It also comes with support for advanced authentication (LDAP, RADIUS, Active Directory), and a pass-through port for local console access. The unit starts at $385 and can support as many as eight remote users without a dedicated KVM server.

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ATMs/Kiosks

Wincor Nixdorf announced it has shipped its 10,000th CCDM ATM in the United States. The German manufacturer states that this milestone illustrates the increasing adoption of ATMs that accept bulk deposits of check and cash. The CCDM module, which was the first of its kind when launched in November 2002, features a single input that accepts both cash and checks in bulk form through one single input.

Last week we covered security researcher Barnaby Jack's successful "jackpotting" of ATMs. In response, the ATM Industry Association (ATMIA) responded with a press release that expressed its confidence in the industry’s software and other critical systems, which are subject to robust governance, standards and industry best practices. “This type of research conducted by professionals like Jack should be leveraged by our industry to improve ATM security,” said Mike Lee, CEO of ATMIA. “ATM security is one of the most technically challenging areas of a financial institution’s operation,” Lee stated. “To ensure the most effective protection against a variety of threats – including internal, external, physical and logical threats – the industry advises financial institutions to implement and maintain a comprehensive, multi-layered security approach. In addition, ATM security programs should be regularly monitored, reviewed and updated to anticipate and mitigate changing threats.”

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AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile are partnering with Discover for a new mobile payments scheme that will bypass Visa and Mastercard. The new payment service would use contactless technology to complete purchases in stores. Payments would be processed through Discover’s network, currently the fourth-biggest behind Visa, MasterCard and American Express, while Barclays would help manage the accounts.

Security experts are warning that if smartphones can act as credit cards, then users are going to have to start protecting their devices accordingly. They say that smartphone credit card users are going to have to install some form of remote-wipe application that will let them erase any and all data on their smartphone if they ever lose it. Additionally, users will not only have to take care in the types of apps they download onto their phones but also install antivirus, antimalware and firewall programs onto their devices. Some observers believe that Google will have to start taking more of a direct role in ensuring that applications on their store are safe, particularly in an era when more people will be using Android-based devices as personal credit cards.

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Over time, firewall rule bases tend to become large and complicated. Firewall audit tools help admins find configuration errors, avoid conflicting rules, identify vulnerabilities and meet auditing and compliance mandates. Whether or not you use a firewall management tool, here are some best practices:

* Delete fully shadowed rules that are effectively useless, as well as duplicate objects.

* Delete expired and unused rules and objects.

* Remove unused connections, including specific source/destination/service routes that are not in use.

* Enforce object naming conventions that make the rule base easy to understand.

* Delete old and unused policies.

* Break up long rule sections into readable sizes.

* Document rules, objects and policy revisions for future reference.

Every security expert agrees that social engineering is a very effective tool. The Social Engineering Tookit (SET) gives penetration testers a streamlined way to perform social engineering attacks using exploits available in the Metasploit Framework. The new 0.6 release of SET includes many new features and provides three major attack vectors, including spear-phishing, Web attacks through site-cloning, and malicious USB/DVD/CDs, along with the brand new Arduino-based Teensy USB HID device.

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Online & Mobile Banking:

Driving Customer Growth

CashEdge - http://www.cashedge.com Read Manish Vrishaketu's comments: http://www.banktt.com/roundtable/CashEdge.pdf

eEminder - http://www.eeminder.com   Read Thomas Utsch's comments:   http://www.banktt.com/roundtable/eEminder.pdf

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

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

Javelin Strategy & Research - http://www.javelinstrategy.com Read Mark Schwanhausser's comments: http://www.banktt.com/roundtable/Javelin.pdf

uMonitor - http://www.umonitor.com   Read Dinesh Sheth's comments:   http://www.banktt.com/roundtable/uMonitor.pdf

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On-premise and online CRM solutions developer, Surado Solutions, announced that the Surado CRM Online Professional Edition is now available with project management features as part of the standard configuration. With Surado CRM Project Management, users gain the ability to create and manage projects, tasks, sub-tasks and associated activities. Users will also be able to assign and track resources, budgets, status, project timelines, project manager and more. The Surado Project Management solution is part of the core product line and will automatically link projects to individuals and vice versa.

Profitability Referral Tracking Full-Contact CRM

MCIF CRA/HMDA Compliance

MARQUIS delivers proven solution to over 750 financial institutions worldwide that are truly Easy, Complete, and Affordable. 

 

What the nation’s leading consultants are saying about Marquis!

“I was absolutely blown away the first time I saw ReferralTrax. Its sheer simplicity of operation masks an unbelievably sophisticated CRM engine that has no rival in the commercial marketplace. ReferralTrax chops the competition off at the knees…”

Randall Putala
SDMI

“Marquis is consistently listed by my clients as the best in class for MCIF software, support and service. I recommend Marquis to any marketing department looking for robust functionality in an MCIF - backed by world-class service.”

Constance Anderson
Consultant/Speaker

“The folks at Marquis truly know what they're doing! And, they are a class act."

Mike Neill
Michael Neill & Associates

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!

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RightCliq, which Visa unveiled in March and just launched, represents one of the card network’s most ambitious thrusts in e-commerce. A plug-in that allows consumers to store payment card details in an e-wallet, RightCliq enables automated form-filling on checkout pages, serves up discounts and other offers from select merchants, and lets shoppers seek feedback from friends on items they’re considering for purchase. Users can load details for cards from Visa competitors as well as prepaid cards and store-issued cards. They can also store products in a ‘Wishspace,’ making it easier to comparison shop. Generating more volume for its network is Visa’s objective with the new service.

The US Federal Reserve has reported its latest G.19 Consumer Credit statistics - finding that: "Consumer credit decreased at an annual rate of 3.75 percent in the second quarter. Revolving credit decreased at an annual rate of 9.5 percent, and non-revolving credit was about unchanged. In June, consumer credit decreased at an annual rate of .75 percent, revolving credit decreased at an annual rate of 6.5 percent, and non-revolving credit increased at an annual rate of 2.5 percent."

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Mushroom Networks' Truffle Broadband Bonding Network Appliance creates one fast connection out of up to six separate lines, a technique known as bonding. The Truffle combines the bandwidth of all available broadband lines into one giant pipe, with download speeds of up to 50Mbit/sec., the company says. Internet access may be through a DSL modem, cable modem, T1 line or just about any broadband connection. This helps increase overall throughput, and acts as a backup mechanism, too. If one of the "bonded" lines fails, the Truffle connection just keeps running with the other available lines.

Before installing a VoIP phone system, you will need to make sure that your Internet connection and network infrastructure can handle VoIP. One quick way of calculating the total bandwidth needed to send and receive your calls is to multiply the number of anticipated simultaneous calls times the packet size of the voice codec you will be using (like G.722 or G.729). Plus there are bandwidth calculators online that can help you with this such as Scrutinizer NetFlow Analyzer.

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Webtorials recently released some survey results about user requirements for contact center deployments. Among their key findings: contact center professionals expect the next two years to bring strong growth in non-voice interaction vectors with e-mail, Web self-service, and Web chat expected to lead the way. While 14% of voice agents also "extensively" handle multimedia communications today, that percentage is expected to grow to 22% of agents in two years who will extensively also offer e-mail, Web service, Web chat, SMS, IM and social media communications to consumers.

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