BANK tech-trends News
 

February 28, 2011 - March 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

Digital Check announced the launch of the TellerScan TS240/TTP (teller transaction printer), a combination unit that incorporates check scanning and thermal transaction printing into one device. The device combines Digital Check’s TS240 batch-fed scanner, which scans at 50, 75 or 100 documents per minute, with CognitiveTPG’s A799 thermal printer. The company says that a big benefit of the TS240/TTP is that it saves up to 50% of teller counter space by combining scanner and receipt printer units, each of which previously required its own space, into one footprint about equivalent to the scanner.

Hewlett-Packard announced Intel-based business laptops with features that make it easier to swap components or fix the PCs. The new EliteBook and Probook laptops will come with Intel's latest Core i3, i5 and i7 chips, and they will feature one panel at the bottom that can be easily removed to replace the fan, hard drive, memory and networking modules. HP noted that instructions to fix laptops or swap components could be provided over the phone, which could save the time and money for IT departments.

Acer, the No. 4 PC maker in the US, has released a line of servers and storage products for the US market. For its US reintroduction, Acer has released a tower rack, blade system, and systems especially designed for cloud computing, all with a number of configurations, as well as network attached storage products. Acer believes it will be especially competitive in "option kits," or additional hard drives, memory, and other components - they claim that their option pricing will be 40% below what competitors are charging. Prices range from $721 for a tower to $10,499, for storage.

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ATMs/Kiosks

NCR unveiled a new, compact ATM that they say has the power and reliability of a larger machine. The NCR SelfServ 16 is being pitched as the ideal off-premise ATM for sites with transaction volumes with as few as 500 transactions per month. It features a 2,200 note cassette, the smallest cash dispenser in the NCR SelfServ family, low power consumption, a 15” color TFT LCD display, and options for a touch screen and sunlight-readable display.

SHAZAM, a technology and operations support provider to more than 1,500 financial institutions in 30 states, will begin offering advanced ATM marketing software from NCR. The ATM marketing module provides SHAZAM's bank clients with a centralized and secure means to run personalized direct marketing programs to customers. The NCR APTRA eMarketing Preference Center works in conjunction with SHAZAM's business software to enable their clients to deliver real-time, personalized and synchronized messaging across channels in line with their preferences, such as default language, fast cash amount and receipt options.

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According to a survey from vendor Sybase 365, widespread adoption of contactless mobile payments is still at least two years away thanks to poor coordination between industry players. With a range of stakeholders, including mobile operators, merchants, payment processors, FIs and developers, all involved, 30% cite a lack of industry coordination as the main culprit for this delay. A lack of NFC readers at the point-of-sale was raised as a reason by a 26% of respondents and inadequate handsets by 25%.

The Center for Financial Services Innovation believes that prepaid cards are a key solution for serving the underbanked, and that mobile financial services can be integral part of prepaid cards. In addition to enabling consumers to keep close tabs on their account balances, mobile financial services can provide a number of other relevant and useful services that can lead to greater financial capability, such as budgeting tools, transaction alerts, savings reminders, mobile RDC, ATM locations and more.

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ValidEdge has released their new Network Malware Security (NMS) system, which is a combined hardware and software solution that they say represents a new class of anti-malware security solution. The NMS system is designed to handle unknown zero-day malware or a single-target malware attack on critical assets. The NMS system includes sensor agents, system manager with black and white list scanners and an analyzer. The NMS agents passively monitor span ports of core switches or critical network segments and re-assemble packets that contain potentially suspect code. The NMS agents then forward the files automatically to the NMS Analyzer appliance.

FireEye announced their Email Malware Protection System that is designed to stop targeted email attacks, also known as spear phishing, to help prevent malware-induced network breaches and data theft. The new Email MPS features the Real-time Attachment and URL Analysis engine that evaluates emails for zero-hour malware using virtual machines that run a cross-matrix of operating systems and applications, such as various web browsers and plug-ins. The company says that this dynamic analysis enables them to detect and stop spear phishing email attacks aimed at known and truly unknown OS and application vulnerabilities.

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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

Integrated Media Management - http://www.immonline.com   Read Nish Shah's comments:   http://www.banktt.com/roundtable/IMM.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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Global strategic branding firm Siegel+Gale just announced the results of its first annual Global Brand Simplicity Index, and here are a few financial services-related survey highlights:

• Consumers say they are willing to pay between 3.5 to 4% more for simpler experiences with their banks and credit card companies
• They would also be willing to spend $2.6 billion to improve the ease of their banking experiences
• Banks and credit card companies were in the bottom five industries on the Brand Simplicity Index, with credit cards taking the bottom spot – as the most complex industry in the minds of consumers

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Visa has launched a new person-to-person payment service that lets consumers transfer funds in near real-time to other cards over the VisaNet network. Visa is rolling the service out internationally, with a view to capturing market share from PayPal, and emerging mobile remittance platforms. In action, senders provide their bank with the recipient's Visa card number to initiate the payment. Visa says the process does away with the need for senders to fill out complicated forms and provide routing information. When processed through VisaNet, funds are credited directly to the eligible Visa credit, debit or prepaid account in minutes, freeing recipients from having to visit agent locations to collect cash.

OddJob is a new type of financial malware with the ability to hijack customers’ online banking sessions in real time using their session ID tokens. A unique feature of OddJob is its ability to bypass the logout request of a user to terminate their online session. Because the interception and termination is carried out in the background, the legitimate user thinks they have logged out, when in fact the fraudsters remain connected, allowing them to maximize the profit potential of their fraudulent activities. Another noteworthy aspect of OddJob is that the malware's configuration is not saved to disk - a process that could trigger a security analysis application – instead, a fresh copy of the configuration is fetched from the Command & Control (C&C) server each time a new browser session is opened.

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In general, Web content filtering can be done at the network edge, or you can force all access via an on-demand proxy service (web security-as-a-service). Websense is one vendor that has offered a hybrid approach for over a year now, allowing customers to define policy for both web and email security in one place to deliver on-premise or on-demand. The company says that their TRITON Security Gateway Anywhere solution gives you Web and email and data security wrapped into one product operated from one console, and that their TruHybrid email pre-filters inbound email to stop unsolicited email and malware - more than 80% of your email – from ever hitting your network edge.

Tone Software, a provider of comprehensive network monitoring and management solutions, announced the availability of SIP management through its ReliaTel VoIP quality of service (QoS) and Converged Infrastructure Management software. The solution provides the ability to monitor and analyze VoIP QoS in real-time providing immediate awareness of quality degradation occurring at the SIP trunk, and the specific metrics and facts related to quality or service issues. ReliaTel can also enable users to monitor and manage their physical SIP architecture - including session border controllers, gateways and softswitches - for device health, link status and utilization statistics.

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What should be measured to mark success around and continuously improve the caller experience? Every contact center has different priorities and values, but here are seven key metrics that the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) has identified:

1. First-Call Resolution

2. Service Level/Response Time

3. Adherence to Schedule

4. Forecasting Accuracy

5. Self-Service Accessibility

6. Contact Quality

7. Caller Satisfaction

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