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Your source for the latest technology information of interest to community banks across America.

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter and stay on top of the latest technology trends in Hardware, Software, ATMs, Biometrics, Wireless, Online Banking, Marketing, Security, Internet Access and Call Centers.

March 23, 2020


Hardware News

 

Seagate IronWolf 510: An M.2 NVMe SSD for NAS

Seagate’s IronWolf 510 is an M.2 NVMe SSD with caching speeds of up to 3GBps for NVMe-compatible systems and is designed for business NAS needing 24×7 multi-user storage that is cache enabled. The IronWolf 510 SSD is reliable with 1.8 million hours mean time between failures (MTBF) in a PCIe form factor, two years of Rescue Data Recovery Services, and a five-year limited warranty.

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Software Updates

 

Windows 10 2004: Here Are the New Features You Need to Know About

Aligning Windows and Azure has shifted the timelines of Windows 10's development, at the same time as Microsoft has shifted to different support lifecycles for its spring and fall Windows releases, describing them as "a small fall update and a comprehensive spring update". This article highlights the changes coming soon in the spring 2020 Windows 10 update.

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ATMs/Kiosks

 

National ATM Council Releases COVID-19 Safety Guidelines

The National ATM Council, in conjunction with guidance and assistance from Hyosung, Genmega and Triton, released COVID-19 safety guidelines for its members. They offer 10 recommendations in this article for ATM deployers.

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What You Need to Know About Handling Cash Amid Coronavirus Spread: WHO Guidelines

The lifespan of various bills ranges four to 15 years, according to the Federal Reserve, meaning your bills have a lot of time to accumulate germs. Despite reports that the World Health Organization was pushing people to use contactless payments, a spokesperson for the WHO tells CNBC Make It that it has not issued any warnings or statements about the use of cash. Instead, it reiterated that you should wash your hands, including after handling money, especially if you’re eating or touching food.

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PAI Launches ATM Management via Mobile

Payment Alliance International has created suite of tools that allow users to automatically manage key ATM functions, including, remote management services, from anywhere in the world by using a mobile device. Using PAI’s proprietary software, the firm says that users can reset an ATM terminal by pressing a few menu items on a smartphone.

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Wireless World

 

Digital Wallets to Represent Half of Global eCommerce Sales by 2023

The Worldpay from FIS 2020 Global Payments Report predicts that digital wallets will represent half of global eCommerce sales by 2023, while “Buy Now, Pay Later” (BNPL) methods emerge as the fastest-growing online payment preference over the next five years. In 2019, 22 percent of in-store purchases globally were conducted using mobile/digital wallets – up from 16 percent in 2018. Market forecasters project that more than one billion shoppers will make a digital or mobile wallet payment in 2020.

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Verizon: Attacks on Mobile Devices Rise

According to the 2020 Verizon Mobile Security Index, about 40% of their respondents across the board report having a mobile security compromise which is an increase from 33% of organizations in Verizon's 2019 report. Nearly two-third of those responding, 62%, said that expediency was the reason for short-changing security, while 52% listed convenience.

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Security Section

 

12 Security Tips for the ‘Work from Home’ Organization

Organizations of all sizes must consider the consequences of working from home in terms of systems access, access to internal IT infrastructure, bandwidth costs and data repatriation. This article provides these 12 tips: 1. Provide employees with basic security knowledge; 2. Provide your people with VPN access; 3. Provision security protection; 4. Run a password audit; 5. Ensure that software is updated; 6. Encourage the use of (secure, approved) cloud services; 7. Reset default Wi-Fi router passwords; 8. Mandatory backups; 9. Avoid the use of USB sticks; 10. Use an MDM/EMM solution; 11. Develop contingency plans now; and 12. Foster community and care for employees.

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8 Key Security Considerations for Protecting Remote Workers

Another article covering actions should you take immediately to help ensure you can allow your workforce to work remotely and securely.

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Technology and Marketing

 

What Should Marketers Measure?

In this article, one marketing expert contends that leads, lead conversion or website traffic look good on a chart or in a report, but more often than not, don’t translate into long-term customers. Instead, he recommends measuring things like lead-to-customer ratios, pipeline velocity and customer engagement. He concludes that engagement tactics like personalization and customized experiences are how marketers – and in turn sales teams – create value for prospects across their entire customer lifecycle.

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Online Banking/E-Commerce/Website Design

 

Square to Launch Bank for Small Businesses

Digital payments company Square announced it will launch its small business bank next year. Square’s application for the bank, Square Financial Services, has been conditionally approved for a bank charter. Square Financial Services will operate as an independent subsidiary of Square. The new bank’s primary objectives will be to offer small business loans for Square Capital’s commercial lending business, and to offer deposit products. This comes just one month after P2P lending company Lending Club announced plans to purchase Radius Bank. The move offers Lending Club users a full suite of banking tools. Square also follows in the footsteps of Varo Money, which received approval for deposit insurance from the FDIC in February.

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Internet Access

 

With Everyone Working from Home, VPN Security Has Now Become Paramount

With most employees working from home amid today's COVID-19 (coronavirus) outbreak, it is now more important than ever that organizations and IT staff set up systems to capture metrics about the performance and availability of VPN services. Plus, it will be very important that the VPN service is patched and up-to-date because there will be way more scrutiny (scanning) against these services. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) also become critical - in a report last year, Microsoft said that enabling a MFA solution for online accounts usually blocks 99.9% of all account takeover attacks, even if the attacker has valid credentials for the victim's account.

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9 Home Office Upgrades to Improve Telecommuting

This article provides a list of products that will make working from home more productive and comfortable. It also provides links for detailed product descriptions and pricing.

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Call Centers

 

What Makes a Great Chatbot? Laser Focus on Customers

According to many chatbot deployers, the technology must be designed and deployed with clear customer experience mandates, goals and key performance indicators that show value for the user. This article interviews business leaders who have built chatbots to discuss the secrets of their success, including precautions companies should take when building them.

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Singing the Praises of Voice ID

British bank HSBC claims that the introduction of voice biometrics at its call centers has prevented almost £400 million of customers’ money from falling into the hands of telephone fraudsters in 2019. VoiceID, which was introduced by HSBC in 2016 and is currently used by over 2 million active customers, works by recognizing unique characteristics of a customer’s voice, to enable safe and speedy access to telephone banking.

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