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.
Quantum offers their Artico intelligent NAS appliance that they say balances storage use between performance disk and more cost effective mass storage, while keeping files accessible. Artico stores and retains data in a tiered storage system, both on-premise or in the cloud. The appliance uses StorNext-enabled policies and the data migration tools of Rocket Arkivio Autostor software to manage files. As data is moved to archive storage it is no longer part of the regular backup process, so there is less data to back up and backups take much less time.
Solid state drives (SSDs) are built for speed, not archiving, but contrary to some urban myths they won't quickly lose data when unplugged. The risk of data loss is low if the drive is stored at room temperature - the amount of time they retain data when put on the shelf is measured in years, not days. NAND storage on SSDs retains data as electrical charges, which can leak slowly or faster, if exposed to extreme conditions.
|
Hardware Section Sponsored by
MVi |
Software Updates
Software asset management (SAM) tools can prevent software overspend for both licensing and maintenance. SAM vendors include Express Metrix, Snow Software and BMC FrontRange Solutions. A SAM tool should be able to:
- Discover all IT assets on the network
- Provide an accurate hardware and software inventory
- Reconcile purchases against actual purchasing data for the number of licenses installed or in use
- Meter software usage
- Advise on which users have not installed required security patches or updates
- Provide comprehensive reporting
Velocimetrics announced the release of VMX Payments which is a solution that they say helps banks gain a detailed, real-time, understanding of the status of all payments as they flow across the end-to-end payments process in a single view. Their software tracks each and every payment using an independently allocated, unique and searchable identifier, so the exact location of any given payment, or batch of payments, can be revealed. The system is able to capture data from files, network traffic, messaging middleware, and from inside application code, in any combination.
In 2013, 87% of skimming occurred on ATMs, while gas station pumps came in a distant second. According to Verizon's 2014 Data Breach Investigations Report, card skimmers on ATMs are discovered in the following manner:
- External Fraud Detection (26%)
- Law Enforcement (21%)
- End User (17%)
- Unrelated Party (12%)
- Reported By User (17%)
- Internal Fraud Detection (7%)
|
ATMs/Kiosks Sponsored by
Heritage Industries |
The Federal Reserve estimates that only 13 percent of phone owners have used their devices to pay at a store or restaurant. 451 Research predicts U.S. in-person mobile payments will grow to $10 billion this year, $19 billion in 2016, and $38 billion in 2018. Meanwhile, 52 percent of retailers cited security issues at the largest single factor preventing them from investing in new payment technology. Although custom mobile payment deployments by individual merchants or chains (e.g., Starbucks) dominate in-store mobile payment activity, offerings by Apple Pay and Google Wallet should expand their share as they gain popularity.
Mobile banking may soon be coming to cars as they become more Internet-enabled. For example, FIS is studying ways for people to check their account balances with their voices and transform a car into a wallet to authorize purchases at a gas station by identifying the vehicle as belonging to an account holder. Meanwhile San Francisco-based Automatic Labs develops apps that includes expense report and car cost management features which could conceivably be linked to accounts. Some even envision a day when the auto could automatically act as an ATM card when someone arrives at an institution's drive-through cash machine.
The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) has released a Cybersecurity Assessment Tool (Assessment) to help institutions identify their risks and assess their cybersecurity preparedness. The release of the Cybersecurity Assessment Tool follows last year’s pilot assessment of cybersecurity preparedness at more than 500 institutions. While use of the tool for now is optional, regulators plan to incorporate the tool into their cyber exam processes as early as June 2016. The tool includes three main components: 1) a risk profile assessment; 2) a cybersecurity maturity assessment; and an interpretation and analysis assessment.
SecurityScorecard estimates that more than 4,700 organizations are infected by some type of advanced banking malware. The company, which specializes in tracking a company’s risk of intrusion, notes that the top banking malware families that have been circulating are Dridex, Bebloh and TinyBanker. Those distributing these packages and other types of malware often use tools to encrypt the software called crypters or packers, which compress the file in a way that makes it hard to detect.
Online and Mobile Banking:
Using Digital Technology to Create Value for Customers
 |
|
Cognizant - http://www.cognizant.com
Read Steven DeLaCastro's comments: http://www.banktt.com/Cognizant.pdf |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
|
Javelin Strategy & Research - http://www.javelinstrategy.com
Read Mary Monahan's comments: http://www.banktt.com/Javelin.pdf |
 |
If your bank offers a blog on your website, many marketing experts recommend that you should try to write for your customers, not yourself, and address typical customer pain points. The blog is meant to be a source of valuable information for readers, not a pure sales and marketing tool. The goal is to deliver genuinely useful content that answers your readers’ financial questions and makes them want to come back again and again. One approach is to write about solutions to common problems or pain points that customer service representatives hear about in their conversations in the branch and on the phone.
Online Banking/E-Commerce/Website Design
Research firm Oliver Wyman estimates that venture capitalists have poured $23.5 billion into fintech startups in the last two years. They, along with research firm Anthemis Group and Santander, have released a white paper calling for FIs to partner with innovative startups as part of an effort to make banking "frictionless." The forward-looking paper also contends that three technologies - the Internet of Things, blockchain or distributed ledger, and smart data - could help FIs prevent disruption in lending, payments, money management and other areas.
Almost half (46 percent) of Internet users believe that traditional branch banking is safer than banking online, according to a survey by Kaspersky Lab and B2B International. Nevertheless, most people still make some payments online and many of them fail to take even basic security precautions. For example, less than 80% of computers on OS X and Windows were password protected, and only 67% of smartphones and 57% of Android tablets had passwords, while only 38% of respondents take precautions when using free public Wi-Fi networks.
Menlo Security says that their Menlo Security Isolation Platform (MSIP) eliminates malware from key attack vectors including Web and Email. Available as a public cloud service or for deployment in the user’s data center, the MSIP ensures that the user’s Web session and all active content (e.g. Java, Flash, etc.), whether good or bad, are fully executed and contained in the Isolation Platform. The MSIP can be deployed stand-alone or in conjunction with existing Web security gateways, next generation firewalls, network sandboxes or other security systems. They state that their Adaptive Clientless Rendering works with the user’s native browser (IE, Chrome, Safari, Firefox), meaning there is no requirement for any software on the end user device (i.e. no thin client, replacement browser, plug-in, etc.),
Ingate Systems has upgraded its SIParator/Firewall hardware and software line of Enterprise Session Border Controllers (E-SBCs) to offer new functionality and simplified pricing. The SIParator/Firewall S21 has been upgraded to support up to 400 sessions; the previous version supported up to from 50 sessions. The S52 manages up to 2,000 concurrent calls. A software-based SIParator/Firewall E-SBC for virtual machines can be licensed for up to 2,000 concurrent calls.
Mitel announced a series of enhancements to its MiContact Center portfolio including multi-language multimedia capabilities, along with support for multiple email SMTP servers. Their MiContact Center Enterprise Edition now supports replay capability, and multimedia-based customer service support for multimedia agent forecasting and multimedia agent scheduling. Plus, their Outbound module supports three-way conferencing for agents, dynamic calling party number presentation, intelligent time zone scheduling, and call recording integration.
