BANK tech-trends News
 

May 2, 2011 - May 6, 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 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.

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ATMs/Kiosks

AlarmIt Security Solutions announced that it has developed a security system that helps prevent internal thefts by ATM company employees. The Matthews, NC-based company's product is dubbed the MT3000. The MT3000 alarm system logs every authorized or unauthorized entry into the ATM, enabling ATM deployers to track employee access to their machines. The MT3000 is available in a TCP/IP or dial-up version and includes a back-up battery system.

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Tyfone has launched what appears to be the first solution from a third party vendor that allows any consumer with a mobile device to enroll in, and then use, mobile banking directly from a handset. The new product, which also features integration with Tyfone’s near field communication (NFC) platform for mobile payments, should help banks add mobile customers who are not already enrolled in online banking. Tyfone’s multimode mobile banking solution offers a range of features delivered via mobile application, mobile websites or text messaging.

By some accounts, more than 1,000 financial institution apps have been introduced within the last six months. While some are just simple mobile banking apps, others include advanced functionality such as mobile photo billpay. Then there are niche apps for defined consumer segments, e.g., Shake and Bank. This iPhone/iPod Touch app is designed to give account holders a quick look at the balance in their account - simply open the app, shake your iPhone and see your current balance. It is targeted towards children to help encourage them to save more money with its simple kid friendly approach.

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HTK surveyed IT leaders from a range of industries, and found that 90% of them face ongoing issues when it comes to password reset issues; with 5% claiming that it placed a huge drain on resources. Their research found that 79% of organizations in fields such as high-tech, manufacturing, banking, media and marketing still do not have an automated password reset service, such as online or IVR. The survey showed that 42% of respondents found certain times of year busier for password resets, while 86% said that it was busier after holidays and long breaks away.

PacketMotion released the PacketSentry Virtual Probe, which monitors and secures access to sensitive data in VMware clusters by delivering PacketSentry's application and identity-aware solution as a guest VM that does not require administrators' knowledge of IP addresses. The company notes that lack of visibility and control within a virtual cluster can result in unauthorized communication between VMs, mixing of trust levels within a virtual host, and failure to detect suspicious access of key information assets. The PacketSentry Virtual Probe implements multiple controls in a single application while consuming about 3-5 percent of the host's CPU. The Virtual Probe is priced at $4,995 for a 5 pack of monitored servers/VMs and $21,995 for a 25 pack.

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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

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

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Maximizer Software announced the introduction of their new cloud-based CRM solution, Maximizer CRM Live. The company says that Maximizer CRM consolidates all contacts, action items, business communications, forecasts, reports and results into one central hub that can be accessed by a Web browser on any operating system. The platform is available at $39 per user per month for 5 or more users, or $49 per month for less than 5 users, and is powered by Microsoft Windows Azure.

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At the recent Fourth Visa Global Security Summit, one speaker said that 61% of consumers believe cybercriminals are “one step ahead” of the card industry when it comes to data security and fraud. It was generally agreed upon that the payment card industry needs to adopt smarter technologies and risk evaluations to counter the threat of evolving cybercriminals. Visa's chief enterprise risk officer cited tokenization and encryption as examples of techniques to make the card data environment smaller and lower the risk of exposure. Ellen Richey also offered three fraud prevention suggestions: the spread of smarter payment devices that include chip-and-PIN cards, more intelligent payment transaction networks, and greater adoption of cardholder authentication methods such as two-factor authentication.

The recent RSA security breach has made many organizations nervous as evidenced by the fact that one survey indicates 44 percent of businesses are reevaluating their use of security tokens, with another 15 percent speeding up already planned evaluations of alternatives. The survey was conducted by PhoneFactor, a multi-factor authentication provider that leverages phone-based authentication in lieu of traditional tokenization. Malware such as ZeuS and man-in-the-middle attacks are driving increased interest in out-of-band security by financial institutions, plus Google's deployment of phone-based authentication has moved the cause forward, according to PhoneFactor.

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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Radmin's free Advanced IP Scanner is a simple and fast way to run a quick scan to check what is on your network. Select any device and you can connect to it via HTTP, secure-HTTP, FTP or shared folders as available. AIPS supports Wake-on-LAN, remote shutdown, telnet access (requires a separate telnet client), and can launch Radmin's own remote monitoring software.

According to research firm Nemertes, only about 8% of organizations are currently using hosted VOIP/UC; however, another 12% are evaluating it for potential purchase. Right now, mostly smaller organizations are utilizing cloud-based solutions mainly to minimize upfront costs, and many of these are the same kinds of companies who bought Centrex services years ago. Some analysts believe that thanks to announcements from Cisco, Siemens, and service providers such as AT&T, BT and Verizon, cloud services for larger organizations will become a reality in the near future.

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Some call center experts believe that the “informal call center” is now a proven method for reducing operating costs that also boosts service levels to callers. This is where the call center agent can make use of other “knowledge experts” who are in the organization, but outside the call center, who can be called upon to assist with more complex issues or “high value” customers. Many contact center experts believe that unified communications - more specifically “presence, is key to making the informal call center model work properly. Presence is critical to making this model work because it allows agents to “see” which experts are available, in real time, via the user interface, and make a decision as to which expert to transfer the call to. Additionally, in some cases the expert is conferenced-in on the call, with conferencing being yet another one of those important UC capabilities in the call center.

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