BANK tech-trends News
 

March 28, 2011 - April 1, 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

Dell has come out with one-socket PowerEdge C5220 and C5125 servers, also called "microservers", that can share components such as power supplies, fans and network connectors inside a densely packed 3U chassis. The PowerEdge C5220 will run on Intel's low-power Xeon chips that include features found in traditional server chips including 64-bit support, error correction features and hardware-based virtualization support. The PowerEdge C5125 will run on AMD's Phenom or Athlon dual- or quad-core chips. The OS options for the servers include Windows Server, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0.

Back to Top

Back to Top

ATMs/Kiosks

The world is experiencing a boom in deposit automation, according to London-based strategic research and consulting firm Retail Banking Research (RBR), whose latest study “Deposit Automation and Recycling 2010” covers the 46 largest markets worldwide for the technology. A total of 464,000 ADTs had been installed worldwide by the end of 2009, a figure that has increased by 44% since 2007. A notable landmark has been passed, with automated deposit ATMs now outnumbering envelope deposit ATMs worldwide. It should be noted however that this milestone has still to be reached in a number of the world’s largest markets, including Brazil, India, Spain and the USA.

First National Bank, which is based in Johannesburg, South Africa, announced the launch of a new service that allows customers to withdraw funds from ATMs using their mobile phones instead of their ATM cards. To withdraw cash, customers must log onto Cellphone Banking and select "withdraw cash" and the account from which they want to take the funds, such as checking or savings. FNB then sends an SMS text message with a temporary PIN. At the ATM, the customer selects "cardless services" and "withdraw cash". The next step requires the customer to type in their cellphone number and the temporary PIN. The temporary PIN is good for 30 minutes to make a cash withdrawal, and can only be used once. Cellphone Banking is designed to work with any mobile phone, and users don’t need to download any apps.

Back to Top

According to a new report from ComScore, the number of people accessing their financial institution accounts through mobile devices surged 54 percent in the fourth quarter last year compared with the same period in 2009. The Mobile Financial Advisor report noted that 18.6 million people accessed their financial accounts via a mobile browser, 10.8 million used a mobile app, and 8.1 million used text messaging. Accessing their information through a mobile device was the primary method used by 36 percent of credit card holders and 26 percent of banking consumers. Only a small number of people said they spoke with someone on the phone or in person to conduct their business.

Charge Anywhere has developed software than turns Google's Nexus S Android phone into an NFC payments acceptance terminal. The vendor's mobile payment application for Android enables businesses to process credit card, check and ACH payments in the field. The latest update lets Nexus S owners accept MasterCard PayPass and Visa Blink contactless payments. The company says that their system will be extended to other smartphones as they gain NFC technology.

Back to Top

According to a new Ponemon study entitled "Understanding Security Complexity in 21st Century IT Environments", an overabundance of vendors and regulatory requirements - as well as the continuing problem of end user lack of knowledge - are combining to prevent many organizations from building an effective security defense. The survey of over 2,400 IT security administrators found that over half of them use more than seven different vendors to secure their networks. Larry Ponemon, founder and CEO of the research firm, notes that "ironically, consolidation is harder to cost-justify than point solutions, because there is a cost associated with consolidation projects. But having so many vendors can be an administrative nightmare on the back end."

Back to Top

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

Awareness Technologies - http://www.awarenesstechnologies.com Read Brad Miller's comments: http://www.banktt.com/roundtable/Awareness.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

Back to Top

Merchant-funded rewards are new types of loyalty programs whereby merchants pay direct cash rebates to your customers, plus they may even pay you for access to your online banking customers. To make their highly targeted offers, the merchants need access to your online banking system and customer statements. Some leading rewards service providers include:

• Access Development
• Affinity Solutions
• Cardlytics
• RewardsNow
• Vesdia

Back to Top

American Express is adding a product that will allow consumers to transfer money to others online and through their mobile phones. Dubbed "Serve," the product allows consumers to load funds from a credit or debit card or checking account into an account that can be used for the transfers. Individual Serve users can access their accounts through the main Serve.com site, through iPhone and Android applications and via Facebook.

Back to Top

VoIP-based, unified communications systems can help lower costs, but like any network-based system they need monitoring for usage spikes and network congestion and outages. With a good monitoring solution, you can continually take the pulse of your environment for quality-of-service and business effectiveness. Companies such as SIP Print offer cloud-based services that cover your unified environment with management dashboards that help you verify the health of your communications infrastructure at a glance. Plus they include a suite of tools for active control. There are in-house systems, as well as cloud-based platforms such as SIP Print's SIPCare.

Cisco unveiled a home office wireless LAN access point along with other wireless gear aimed at helping organizations securely connect teleworkers to corporate networks. Using two bands, a teleworker's data can travel uninterrupted over the 5-GHz channel, while home-based family systems and devices can work over the 2.4-GHz band. The new $419 AP, called the Aironet 600 Series Office Extend, works at 802.11n speeds. Cisco also announced a 2500 Series wireless LAN controller for office data centers at organizations that use the home AP. The controller is priced from $2,495.

Back to Top

Enterprise Software from Spectrum is a solution that continually monitors contact center metrics and displays pertinent information, such as service levels and call abandons, to the center’s managers, supervisors and agents via plasma screens. This real-time data gives them the opportunity to make timely decisions on allocation of staff resources, and can also be delivered via pager, a screen pop or browser. By self-monitoring using the information displayed on Spectrum’s plasma screens or screen pops, authorized agents can log in and out of groups based on pre-established metrics, e.g., if they are currently logged-in to a slow-call-volume group and see a call volume increase in another group, they can log-in to that high-call-volume group and offer immediate assistance.

Back to Top