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Used Servers: Bargain or Too Good to Be True?
Previously owned servers and network equipment can be less expensive than new hardware and more readily available, thanks to tech product backlogs, but organizations need to be aware of potential pitfalls. This article recommends that you should only source your equipment from a reputable seller, and they should be easily able to walk you through their test/repair process, and offer you at least some limited guarantees on their products.
Here's 5 of the World's Riskiest Connected Devices
Forescout’s research team analyzed 19 million connected devices deployed across five different industries, with the goal of finding the riskiest device groups. They found these to be the top five: 1) smart buildings, 2) medical devices, 3) networking equipment and IP cameras, 4) VoIP, and 5) video conferencing systems.
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Next-Gen Solutions for Personal Finance Management
The author is convinced that AI will play an increasingly influential role in personal financial management. He says that an AI solution can: draw up a budget and monitor income; evaluate various investment instruments to create a personalized portfolio; automatically expand or rebalance a portfolio in response to changing accountholder contexts and market conditions; and analyze massive quantities of data and spot even hidden correlations.
Microsoft's Teams Premium Service Uses AI to Recap Your Meetings
Microsoft is launching a Teams Premium offering for Microsoft 365 that uses AI to help simplify meeting management. Most notably, an "Intelligent Recap" feature automatically creates tasks, chapters and even personalized highlights. Other upgrades include virtual appointment support and new protections for sensitive data by adding confidentiality labels and watermarks.
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A new report from Kaspersky sheds light on the 2020-2022 ATM and Point of Sale (PoS) malware landscape. The good news is that in 2020, the number of attacks on ATM/PoS dropped significantly in comparison to 2019, from approximately 8,000 attacks to 4,800. The bad news is that malware is getting more sophisticated and this article covers how it is progressing.
Barclays Bank is rolling out a new cashback option without a purchase service in thousands of locations across the UK. The new service allows businesses with a Barclaycard Payments terminal to offer anyone with a Visa or Mastercard debit card up to £100 per day, without needing to make a purchase. In return, participating businesses will be paid a transaction fee by Barclays. Unlike ATMs, consumers will also be able to receive coins, with no lower limit and non-round amounts.
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Banking Apps Are All Alike — but Consumers Clamor for New Features
The author states that consumers are ready for mobile banking app innovation — especially in e-wallets, junior accounts and wealth management. He says that there is a significant market gap for user-friendly mobile banking services in these categories. He concludes that FIs that successfully launch new features — or hone their current offerings — to meet consumer demand stand to gain a significant first-mover advantage.
Mastercard to Issue 'Quantum Resistant' Contactless Cards
Mastercard has approved the first cards for issuers that are compatible with the new EMVCo contactless specifications designed to protect against attacks from both traditional and quantum computers. Mastercard has been working with global standards body EMVCo to embed quantum-resistant Enhanced Contactless specifications into current card programs, amid fears over the prospect of bad actors harnessing quantum computing to break the encryption that protects key systems. The new cards are designed to remain compatible with existing acceptance, network and issuer infrastructure.
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Skybox Security Unveils SaaS Solution for Security Policy and Vulnerability Management
Skybox Security announced the next generation of its Security Posture Management Platform. They claim that it is the industry's first Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution for Security Policy and Vulnerability Management. The firm says their platform visualizes all assets through API integrations, identifies and prioritizes vulnerabilities using proprietary threat intelligence, sees gaps in security controls, and automatically provides remediation options.
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AI as a Powerful CX Tool for Empathy
This article posits that centralized AI-powered decisioning can help inject the necessary empathy into user interactions by allowing FIs to choose from thousands of potential ‘conversations,’ based on live indications of user needs. The author insists that centralized decisioning can be an invaluable transparency tool to demonstrate why offers are being presented to specific accountholders and prove that no unconscious bias is at work.
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Online Banking/E-Commerce/Website Design
In a Payments Industry First, Usage of Debit Cards Tops That of Credit Cards
Consumers’ usage of debit cards has finally surpassed that of credit cards. Through the second quarter of 2022, 56.2% of consumers preferred debit as their primary payment card, compared to 39.5% for credit, according to a report from S&P Global Market Intelligence. The reasons for the overwhelming shift are varied. On a broad scale, they include lower or no fees for debit card use, faster settlement, the additional security feature of a PIN for card-present transactions, and no interest charges. Another factor is that consumers view debit as a way to prevent overspending and better manage their finances.
Nacha announced the launch of PaymentsIQ by Nacha. This online resource allows payments professionals to access more than 100 on-demand courses on topics across the payments ecosystem, ranging from the latest enhancements to the ACH Network to risk management and cryptocurrency.
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Advocates Claim Fiber Is "Greener" than Copper or Cable
According to some observers, fiber is a passive technology that uses less energy than competing technologies like cable. Fiber is often referred to as a “passive” technology because it is uses passive optical networking, or PON, technology and therefore doesn’t require any electricity to power it. Instead, it uses unpowered optical splitters.
Google Chases Amazon and Microsoft in Cloud with AI Technology
Google announced a broad swath of updates to its cloud offerings, aiming to capitalize on its strength in artificial intelligence to gain market share from rivals. Google is beefing up its cloud infrastructure as well, relying on a fourth-generation version of Intel’s Xeon Scalable processor and Google's custom Intel chip.
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Is Your Center Really Resilient?
Formal Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BC/DR) planning has always been a very important aspect of contact centers’ success. This article challenges contact center leaders to take a strategic, proactive approach to BC/DR and take a "Resiliency Self-Assessment" quiz.
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