BANK tech-trends News
 

January 31, 2011 - February 4, 2011

• 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

EMC's data storage systems can easily cost more than $1 million, but now they are targeting more modest sized organizations with an appliance that starts at under $10,000 and comes with an interface the company touts as so intuitive that even non-technical users can quickly learn how to operate it. The VNXe should help EMC compete in an area dominated by NetApp, Dell, and HP. The machines have a special feature that allows them to "phone home" for support to resellers of EMC products.

Cisco introduced the Catalyst 3560-C and 2960-C Compact Series Switches that have small footprints and feature Power over Ethernet (PoE) technology. The Compact Series are PCI compliant to meet security regulations - packets at the switch and end device are encrypted at the source. The Compact Series range from $745 to $1,995 per box.

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ATMs/Kiosks

Wincor Nixdorf announced that they have captured a 10 percent share of annual U.S. ATM shipments in 3 years. The German ATM manufacturer said that they will now focus on Tier 2 institutions, which own 500 to 3,000 ATMs. The company also wants to sell its ATMs to Tier 3 financial institutions, which own 50 to 100 ATMs.

BBVA, a Madrid-based bank, plans to roll out NCR's new concept ATM in more cities across Spain. The ABIL ATMs attempt to "humanize" the ATM to meet cardholder needs, which NCR said is a dramatic departure from traditional machines. They feature an iPad-style touch screen that rotates 90 degrees to protect cardholder privacy. The machine has a single slot that accepts cash and checks - and the same slot dispenses cash and receipts. Plus, the ATM recognizes users based on past usage, not just by information contained on their cards.

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According to the Mercator Advisory Group, mobile person-to-person (P2P) payments is a promising service and a logical expectation for smartphone users accustomed to the "app for that" approach, however today's mobile person-to-person payments fail to deliver on key performance criteria for consumers, especially in the areas of speed to spend, ubiquity and convenience. Here are some highlights of their recent "US Person-to-Person Mobile Payments Market: Gee Whiz or Gee Why?" report:

- Mobile person-to-person payments are in their infancy and are unlikely to crawl out of the crib until smartphone and NFC ubiquity is reached.
- Smartphone adoption's accelerated growth will fulfill a necessary precondition for mobile P2P payments within three years.
- The arrival of NFC in 2011 and its swift growth opens up a payment modality for mobile, proximity-based P2P market that closely replicates the passing of cash. Provided interoperable settlement is available, a big barrier, NFC could accelerate mobile P2P.

Apple will reportedly embed Near Field Communications-based mobile payment services into the next iteration of its iPhone and iPad devices, enabling consumers to make retail purchases by swiping their smartphone or tablet in front of a point-of-sale digital reader unit. Some observers predict that the mobile payment service, slated to go live in mid-2011, will also introduce a loyalty points program. Plus, Apple is considering heavily subsidizing or even giving away payment terminal hardware to small businesses in an effort to accelerate the expansion of NFC technology.

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Advanced persistent threats (APTs) are increasing, but it is difficult to determine how many APT attacks actually occur - mainly because victim organizations aren't required to report them as long as consumer data isn't breached. Since the goal of these types of attacks is to maintain access over a period of time undetected, these attackers typically begin with a spear-phishing email attack that infects a workstation, rather than a server. From there, they can transfer data packaged as an RAR, ZIP, or CAB file. Many times the pilfered data is sent out via an outbound FTP connection or HTTP-S in an effort to blend in with other traffic.

Security vendor Seculert says that Carberp, which is banking malware that targets computers running Microsoft's Windows operating system, is adding more sophisticated capabilities to stay hidden on victims' PCs. In addition to disguising itself as legitimate Windows files and removing antivirus software, the software can now use a randomly different encryption key to communicates with a command-and-controller (C&C) server using encrypted HTTP Web traffic. Previous versions of Carberp encrypted that traffic using RC4 encryption but always used the same encryption key. This new feature will help it evade network-based security solutions that are using traffic signatures to detect bots.

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Security:

Securing the Bank from the Inside to the Outside

Actiance - http://www.Actiance.com Read Sarah Carter's comments: http://www.banktt.com/roundtable/Actiance.pdf

BrandProtect - http://www.BrandProtect.com Read Michael Kiefer's comments: http://www.banktt.com/roundtable/BrandProtect.pdf

Diebold - http://www.Diebold.com Read Scott Harroff's comments: http://www.banktt.com/roundtable/Diebold.pdf

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

HEIT - http://www.goheit.com   Read Jeff Simpler's comments:   http://www.banktt.com/roundtable/Heit.pdf

Indigo Identityware - http://www.indigoidentityware.com Read Thomas J. Rheineck's comments: http://www.banktt.com/roundtable/Indigo.pdf

mFoundry - http://www.mFoundry.com Read Carlo Cardilli's comments:     http://www.banktt.com/roundtable/mFoundry.pdf

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

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

Ongoing Operations - http://www.ongoingoperations.com   Read Hugh Smallwood's comments:   http://www.banktt.com/roundtable/OGO.pdf

S1 Defense - http://www.S1defense.com Read Bruce C. Smalley's comments: http://www.banktt.com/roundtable/S1Defense.pdf

Savant Protection - http://www.savantprotection.com Read Paul Paget's comments: http://www.banktt.com/roundtable/Savant.pdf

TriGeo Network Security - http://www.trigeo.com   Read Michelle Dickman's comments:   http://www.banktt.com/roundtable/TriGeo.pdf

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Lithium Technologies acquired Scout Labs last year and recently updated their social media monitoring software. The platform now includes real-time monitoring and analysis of an organization's Facebook pages, comparing comments to those on other channels including Twitter, Flickr, blogs, and forums; enhanced social media data search tools; and PDF reports that can be used to share social media metrics and trends with fellow employees. For contact centers, the company also includes a Reputation Engine that can automatically route certain questions to experts in-house and/or on social networking sites.

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According to Javelin Strategy and Research, almost 44 percent of households made at least one online P2P transfer in 2009, up from 27 percent in 2008. Douglas A. King, a payments risk expert in the Retail Payments Risk Forum at the Atlanta Fed, is recommending that in order to provide consumers a friendlier P2P online and mobile service, banks could consider the development of a P2P solution that leverages the extensive ACH network in a manner similar to a person-to-business transaction. Much like mobile banking or bill payment, consumers could opt into the P2P service and transfer or receive funds between any financial institution on the ACH network without having to register with and provide confidential data to a third-party P2P service provider to access the service.

SafetyPay offers an Internet payment system that consumers can use to pay for items in lieu of credit cards. SafetyPay teams up with financial institutions and retailers to let consumers pay for online purchases directly from their accounts. SafetyPay touts Nike and Sears as clients, and vies with PayPal and Secure Vault for e-commerce customers, as well as with credit card firms.

PhoneFactor announced support for ISO 8583, the standard protocol that financial institutions use to process credit and debit card transactions. Both MasterCard and Visa base their authorization communications on the ISO 8583 standard as do many ATMs. By supporting the widely used ISO standard, PhoneFactor says that they can authenticate card transactions in any channel, including point-of-sale, ATM, and online transactions, through a single technology implementation. By adding PhoneFactor to the transaction path using the ISO 8583 protocol, card issuers can authenticate transactions with a phone call or text message.

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Xorcom, a provider of IP-PBX hardware utilizing the Asterisk open source development platform, announced enhancements to their product offerings including a hardware echo cancellation module, a redundant power supply device, and a PRI interface solution supporting up to 16 E1/T1 ports in a single chassis. They are also launching their new XE series of IP-PBX for smaller organizations. These systems feature an integrated touch panel and components that are optimized for high density applications.

In Akamai's recently released quarterly "The State of the Internet" report, the United States fairs poorly. Only San Jose, CA made the top 100 cities for fastest average broadband speeds. In terms of overall average broadband speeds by country, the United States lags behind eight others. South Koreans enjoy average connection rates of 14Mbps; the people of Hong Kong enjoy 9.2Mbps on average; Japan's average speed is 8.5Mbps; Romania's is 7.0Mbps; and the broadband providers in the Netherlands deliver average speeds of 6.3Mbps. The United States is tied for ninth place with such countries as Taiwan and Denmark with an average speed of 5.0Mbps.

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Parlance claims that their auto attendant solution, nameConnector, can decrease up to 90 percent of calls requiring operator intervention. Calls are answered on the second ring with a professional voice, and callers can simply state the name of the person they wish to reach. As for cost savings, the company points to research from Forrester Research that shows that it costs $6 for every call handled by an actual person, while a call handled by an auto attendant costs between 5 and 25 cents.

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