BANK tech-trends News
 

May 9, 2011 - May 13, 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

GRGBanking recently published a white paper on ATM hygiene which highlights the public health aspect of keeping ATMs clean. The Chinese ATM manufacturer's white paper points out that studies have shown that over two-thirds of ATM machine keypads examined were contaminated with some bacteria. GRG recommends the regular use of ATM cleaning kits in an effort to help keep ATM users happy with their ATM interactions.

The advanced “ABIL” ATMs from Spanish bank BBVA are getting excellent reviews. The high tech machines allow you to choose the note denominations for the cash dispensed via a single slot that dispenses and receives cash, plus it comes with a special drawer for coins. Additionally, its deposit functionality has the ability to give back change, e.g., put in a 10 euro note, instruct a deposit of 8.50 euros to your account, and ABIL will provide 1.50 change in euro coins.

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According to a Juniper Research report, more than 500 million people are expected to use their smartphones as a mobile ticket by 2015. Consumers will be able to use their smartphones to pay for travel, sporting, and entertainment events via an e-commerce site or over the phone, store the ticket on their mobile device, and redeem it at a physical ticket kiosk. Although mobile ticketing will be convenient for consumers and reduce costs for vendors, barriers to mainstream implementation include a lack of a clear business model, handset and reader availability, and user support.

The Aite Group has released analysis of mobile banking consumer behaviors that indicates that banks will have to make significant investments to improve or develop their mobile marketing capabilities. A senior analyst with Aite Group noted that “the internal struggle has been how to justify investments in this channel and what types of services to deploy next. Based on consumer behavior, mobile marketing functionality can provide the justification for and the answer behind what to deploy.”

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Metasploit, the open source penetration testing solution, has been updated to version 3.7. The Data Import backend has undergone a rewrite, speeding up most import tasks by a factor of four. Metasploit Pro users will note that shell sessions can now be accessed by multiple users at a time. This allows an entire team to collaborate on the post-exploitation process and can be used as a training aid. In addition to these improvements, this release adds 67 new modules consisting of 35 exploits, 17 post-exploitation modules, and 15 auxiliary modules.

The malicious bank Trojan ZeuS is back and it is targeting customers of NACHA (National Automated Clearing House Association). Cybercriminals are sending targeted emails to NACHA customers in an attempt to lure them into downloading and installing attachments containing ZeuS malware. The spoofed emails appear to come from NACHA and inform customers that a transaction sent by them, their bank or some other party has failed.

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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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Some features of a green branch include high-efficiency lighting and plumbing fixtures, recycled content in flooring and counter finish products, refurbished office furniture, and non-Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) paint. Some institutions are also extending their green offerings to include higher interest rates to customers who go paperless and debit cards made of 100% recycled plastic, recycled checks, as well as printing statements using responsible paper products and soy and vegetable inks.

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The retail gift card from Smart Transaction Systems allows users to see their balances at any time via a special type of bar code readable by many smartphones. The card itself does not have any special hardware built in, but instead uses a Quick Response code printed onto stored value and loyalty cards. BlackBerry and Android phones are able to read them with built-in software and free QR code-scanning programs are available for other smartphone platforms, including the iPhone.

Compass Plus announced the availability of the TranzWare Online Universal Payment Gateway that enables banks to quickly build interfaces, if not already available from Compass Plus’ library, for the connection to payment or billing applications. The Universal Payment Gateway is part of TranzWare Online, which provides banks with the ability to switch, route, authorize and manage electronic payments from multiple devices and delivery channels on a single platform.

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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Alcatel-Lucent’s latest version of its OmniPCX Office is designed for organizations with up to 236 employees. The updated system called OmniPCX Office Rich Communication Edition (RCE) Release 8 incorporates more features in the basic software suite, adds a more powerful CPU with native VoIP support, introduces flexible hardware/software packages and increases a number of capacities (e.g. 32 active call center agents, 20 greetings, 200 PIMphony sessions, four languages and built-in 4-hour voicemail). Customers deploy a combination of the OmniPCX Office hardware for telephony services and the Extended Communication Server (ECS) for shared and secure Internet access, remote access for mobile employees, e-mail, Web servers and unified communications and collaborative applications. There are four packages for the OmniPCX Office and two for the ECS.

Hughes Network Systems announced the availability of new managed services suite for enterprises that integrates voice, data and video over affordable broadband. Hughes, a provider of broadband satellite networks and services, says that their ActiveQoS solution is a new network optimization technology that enables 'MPLS-like' performance over high-speed, affordable DSL and cable broadband connections.

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The RCCSP Professional Education Alliance offers a multipart Call Center Supervision Web-Based Training Series with optional supervisor certification. This training series is designed specifically for the specialized training needs of contact center supervisors and managers. Participants will learn best practices in staffing, workforce management, monitoring form design and calibration, agent monitoring and effective coaching techniques and performance management. Additional focus is directed toward the unique aspects of call center operations, such as calculating staffing requirements, understanding call center technology, and complying with labor regulations.

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