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Fortinet, Check Point, Palo Alto Networks Top Gartner Firewall Report
Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, and Check Point topped Gartner’s latest Magic Quadrant for Network Firewalls report. Gartner’s latest report evaluated 17 security vendors on the merits of their hardware, software, or firewall-as-a-service offerings. Huawei, Juniper Networks, and Cisco were ranked challengers in this year’s report.
Dell Launches Its First All-Flash Object Storage Appliance
Dell Technologies is adding a new appliance, called the EXF900, to the Dell EMC ECS EX-Series lineup. It claims the EXF900 has the highest performance of the ECS range of appliances, but that's because the rest of the lineup – the low-end EX300, the mid-range EX500 and high-end EX3000 arrays – are all disk based.
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Next Pathway Launches an Automated Cloud Migration Tool
Next Pathway has announced the next-generation of its cloud-migration-planning technology, called Crawler360, which helps organizations shift legacy data warehouses and data lakes to the cloud by telling them exactly how to cost, size, and start the journey. The software scans data pipelines, database applications, and business-intelligence tools to automatically capture the end-to-end data lineage of the legacy environment.
What Is Microsoft Doing with Linux? Everything You Need to Know About Its Plans for Open Source
Microsoft is submitting patches to the Linux kernel "to create a complete virtualization stack with Linux and Microsoft hypervisor". And when Microsoft wanted to add container support to Windows, it picked an open-source specification designed originally for Linux rather than the internal Windows-centric implementation it had already written. But forget the idea of throwing away the Windows kernel and replacing it with a Linux kernel, because Microsoft's approach to Linux is far more pragmatic and comprehensive. This article goes into more Microsoft/Linux details.
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Next Gen ATMs Certification System
The ATM Industry Association (ATMIA) has launched the official global certification system for Next Gen ATMs, the culmination of a four-year long industry project to create a new API App model for ATMs, integrating ATMs and mobile phones in a new ecosystem. The launch of the official certification system to test Next Gen ATM readiness inaugurates what the trade association calls a “race to the top” to see where the world’s first certified Next Gen ATM will soon be installed.
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Google Plex: The Mobile Banking App Every FI Wants
To date, 11 FIs—three big banks, four community banks, two credit unions, and two digital banks—have announced partnerships with Google for the 2021 launch of the Google Plex checking account. The new checking account will be integrated into the Google Pay app which has three new or redesigned components: 1) Pay; 2) Explore; and 3) Insights.
US Mobile Banking Competitive Edge Study 2020 Report
Insider Intelligence's fourth annual US Mobile Banking Competitive Edge report looks at various mobile banking categories and ranks FIs. Categories include: Most Sought-After Mobile Banking Tools; Security and Control; Account Management; Transfers; and Digital Money Management.
Wi-Fi 6 and 5G: Friends or Foes?
This article looks at the two wireless options, and specifically why they are complementary and not competitive.
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How to Improve the Security of Your Public Cloud
To try to protect their cloud-based data and other assets, those surveyed for Bitglass's 2020 Cloud Security Report pointed to a host of capabilities. Access control was the top method, cited by 68% of the respondents. Next was antivirus and anti-malware technology, cited by 54%. In third place was multifactor authentication, cited by 47%. Other methods mentioned in the survey included data encryption, single sign-on, endpoint security controls, firewalls/network access control, and network encryption/VPN.
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4 Tips for Partnering with Marketing on Social Media Security
In many ways, social media is “low hanging fruit” for scammers. This article discusses the tension, as well as some ways to work together, between the Marketing team that wants as much information about the organization out there as possible, and Security who often want to hold it back.
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Online Banking/E-Commerce/Website Design
The author argues that spending time crafting a savvy digital strategy signals that you have a separate approach from the rest of your banking channels. He is convinced that very narrow digital strategy puts you on a road to failure, because it forces competition and conflicts as teams vie for differentiated levels of support and resources to strengthen their now-competing channels. He concludes that digital is a tool, not a product.
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5 Advantages of a Cloud Disaster Recovery Plan
While on-premises, secondary datacenter and cloud data disaster recovery options are viable in today’s data-first financial sector, the cloud recovery option offers a few advantages to FIs of every size: Geographic separation; Ease of data transfer; A deep bench; Cost-efficiency; and Compliance standards.
Alkira Rolls Software-Defined Underlay into Multi-Cloud Offering
While software-defined overlays like SD-WAN have been around for years, organizations still had to wrangle complex underlay contracts or work with a managed service provider to physically bridge the distance from one branch to the next. Alkira claims that they are making the software-defined underlay a reality with the launch of its cloud backbone-as-a-service offering. The platform takes advantage of the large private networks built by Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure to support their public cloud offerings. Dubbed CBaaS, Alkira can automatically stitch together underlay networks on demand using a simple configuration wizard designed to integrate with existing WAN and SD-WAN deployments from Cisco’s Viptela platform.
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AWS Launches Amazon Connect for Contact Center Services
Amazon is stepping up its contact center services with Amazon Connect Wisdom, Customer Profiles, Real-Time Contact Lens, Tasks and Voice ID. Among the key efforts that build on Amazon Connect, a service that spins up call centers: Amazon Connect Wisdom; Amazon Connect Customer Profiles; Amazon Connect Tasks; and Amazon Connect Voice ID.
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