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BANK tech-trends News
May 16, 2011 - May 20,
2011
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 updated its enterprise Ethernet switch
lineup with the PowerConnect 7000 series, adding high-availability
features, low power consumption and POE (power over Ethernet). The
7000 series consists of stackable Layer 3 Gigabit Ethernet switches
in a variety of configurations with 24 or 48 ports. The boxes use
the Energy Efficient Ethernet standard which reduces power
consumption through techniques such as putting individual ports into
sleep mode during periods of low traffic which can cut per-port
power consumption by as much as 50%. The 7000 series also comes with
several features for high availability, including redundant and
hot-swappable fans and power supplies. The PowerConnect 7048R can be
reconfigured to reverse the airflow through the switch depending on
the data center layout being used.
Hardware Section Sponsored by
MVi |

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Software Updates
Dexpot is a solution that lets you open more than one desktop at a
time on your screen so that you can have multiple open windows. The tool
also lets you easily toggle between the separate desktops for full-screen
viewing. The free virtual desktop software lets you have as many as 20
virtual desktops open simultaneously on your screen.
Commercial virtualization products such as VMware are effective but costly
tools that enable you to serve up different virtual machines. One
alternative to these solutions is the VirtualBox virtualization software,
which is available for Linux, Windows, and Mac. With VirtualBox, it is
possible to create as many virtual images as you like and then serve them up
over the network. VirtualBox is not as robust or as flexible as the VMware
vSphere system, but it is free and may be useful for smaller banks.
Software Section Sponsored by
Raddon Financial Group (RFG) |

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ATMs/Kiosks
Wincor Nixdorf has unveiled their ProView video
surveillance for ATMs. With ProView Video Surveillance, Wincor
Nixdorf now offers software that enables both centralized image and
video monitoring and image analysis. ProView Video Surveillance
consists of two components. The first is ATMeye Core - a software
package developed by Wincor Nixdorf partner BS/2 that processes
image and video data and archives it on the ATM's hard disk. The
second is ProView Video Surveillance Central, which controls data
transmission and provides the analysis function.
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Wireless World
Austin, Texas-based, Malauzai Software has launched a new mobile
banking platform built entirely on “Cool SmartApps” and designed
specifically for banks. Malauzai’s platform is based on three
tenants designed to enhance the customer’s experience: Social
Banking, an Application Management System, and Mobile Marketing.
Malauzai's software is designed so that it can be deployed quickly,
and ties directly to the core system rather than online banking.
Visa is building a digital wallet that people can use to pay for
things online or with their phones instead of with traditional
cards. The product will allow consumers to make online or mobile
purchases with a user name and password, instead of typing in a card
number for each payment. The network said it is working with several
large U.S. and international banks to develop the wallet. Visa will
also have to convince merchants to put a new "one-click" button on
their websites, so that potential customers can use their Visa
digital wallets to buy things by clicking the button. Merchants will
receive the buyer’s billing and address and contact information
along with an authorization code for each transaction, but will not
have access to or store any consumer account data. Financial
institutions and merchants can brand it or extend it as they choose,
and payment options customers can load into the Digital Wallet won't
be limited to just Visa cards.
Bank of America intends to test a new program that would call for
them to notify customers by text message if a transaction will push
their account into an overdraft situation. The customer can then
decide whether to accept the $35 fee or not. The approval would
cover only that particular transaction, and if the customer
replenished the checking account within a specified time period, the
fee would not be charged.
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Security Section
GFI Software has launched GFI MailEssentials Complete, an
anti-phishing and email security solution for smaller organizations
that gives them an email security solution they can deploy using the
delivery model of their choice, whether on premise, as a physical or
virtual appliance or as a hosted service. Their research shows that
nearly 40 percent of smaller organizations rate themselves as
“neutral” to “not satisfied” with their existing e-mail security
solution, and a quarter indicated that they are looking to add a
gateway device or SaaS offering to augment or to replace an existing
system.
Panda Security is rolling out their Virtual GateDefender Performa
which delivers cloud-based protection for VMWare virtualized
environments. The company says that their Virtual GateDefender
Performa system offers protection against all types of
Internet-borne malware and unsolicited e-mail and blocks
non-productive Web activity using a hybrid security cloud in the
perimeter. The hybrid cloud used by the new virtual appliance
combines a private cloud, hosted on a private network which provides
service to Panda Virtual GateDefender Performa; and a public cloud,
which provides service to a global network and private cloud
(Collective Intelligence) as well.
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Leaders Roundtable
Security:
Securing the Bank from the
Inside to the Outside
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Technology and Marketing
When it comes to social media, every bank must be aware of
regulatory considerations, have a social media policy and develop
employee education and training. Plus, you must be aware of what’s
being said about your bank, and some analysts recommend that you
keep an eye on what is being said about your strategic partners and
vendors. They argue social media monitoring should also be a part of
your procurement process. An evaluation of what customers, clients
and peers are saying about a potential vendor can be vital pieces of
information when making vendor selections.
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Online Banking/E-Commerce/Website Design
A group of veterans from the banking, retail and e-commerce worlds
have launched a "cash-gift network" that lets firms send monetary
incentives straight to consumers' credit and debit cards through
participating financial institutions. FreeMonee's system is based on
the firm's patent-pending Adaptive Matching Technology, which
analyses the transaction data of hundreds of millions of debit and
credit card holders - "while protecting privacy" - and matches gifts
with likely buyers. The firm says that with their system merchants
get net, new profitable visits and banks receive a new source of
consumer-friendly revenue.
Bridgeview Bank claims to have created the first, fully accessible
online bank for people with disabilities. On their home page is the
Prime Access logo which reads, “click here for accessible banking”
alongside the universal symbol for people with disabilities.
Clicking the icon downloads an interactive tool bar. Once
downloaded, the toolbar will allow people with disabilities to be
able to use text-to-voice and voice-to-text software to perform all
their banking transactions in real time.
Online
Banking Sponsored by
Confident Technologies |

Online authentication has traditionally involved a trade-off between security
and usability. A single layer of password authentication is not secure, but
strong authentication processes such as hardware tokens and smart cards are
costly, difficult to maintain and inconvenient for your customers.
Community banks can reduce costs and increase revenue by encouraging more
customers
to conduct business on the Web, but many consumers are still wary of online
banking. In fact, 30% of consumers cite security concerns as one of the primary
reasons they don’t bank online.
This
white paper from Confident
Technologies will examine the security threats associated with weak
authentication practices on the Web, and describe new approaches for easily and
affordably adding a second layer of authentication on the website that is both
highly secure and easy on people.
Image-based authentication solutions from
Confident Technologies can
help increase security, reduce support costs and improve the customer experience
by adding one-time passwords using an intuitive, picture-based approach.
This
white paper also describes how image-based authentication can be used with
mobile phones for two-factor authentication that is more secure than sending
authentication codes by SMS text message.
Click here to access the white paper.
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Internet Access
Citing a rise in the number and scope of
distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks across the Internet,
Verisign is expanding its cloud-based DDoS protection service to
cover midsize businesses that are increasingly frequent targets. In
addition to this proactive DDoS service that starts at $35,000 per
year, Verisign is offering a reactive service that allows a smaller
organization to call Verisign after an attack has occurred to stop
it in the cloud before it reaches a particular website.
ShorTel's SA 100 incorporates unified communications software
factory installed on a hardware server that can be managed from
ShoreTel's director platform. The UC package formerly was sold
separately for installation on customer-owned hardware and had its
own management interface. SA 100 supports instant messaging, audio
conferencing and desktop sharing. The company says the new appliance
is half the price of the software-only option.
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Call Centers
Noble Systems is targeting banks with their call center technology,
particularly collections departments. The Noble system has outbound
predictive dialing; blended inbound, real-time reporting and
management; data redundancy; call recording; interactive menus and
customer self service; integrates with collections systems and
various databases; and assorted PBX interfaces. It also includes
interactive voice response (IVR) and text-to-speech (TTS)
capabilities.
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