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Dell announced four new laptops and two desktops with Intel Skylake processors in their lineup of Precision workstations. Dell says that the Precision 5510 is their lightest, thinnest and smallest workstation ever produced, while their 5510 model is being touted as the world's first 15" workstation to use an InfinityEdge display. Meanwhile, the two new Precision desktop workstations can be configured with virtually any Skylake processor and they can also use advanced workstation GPUs.
Microsoft has launched a new Surface tablet and high-end hybrid laptop aimed at winning back professionals who have switched to Apple MacBooks. The Microsoft Surface Pro 4 is 50 percent faster than the MacBook Air and the Surface Book is twice as fast as the MacBook Pro, according Microsoft. Both machines deliver up to 12 hours of battery life, according to the technology giant. The Surface Book's screen can be detached and used as a tablet or flipped a full 360 degrees so it sits on top of the keyboard.
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Internet Biometric Security Systems (IBSS), is offering a 30-day free trial of its biometric e-mail communication technology, IBSSMail. The platform handles biometric identification of e-mail account holders, and uses multi-factor authentication to ensure that only the intended recipient can read the email as well as any attachments. The company states that their biometrically secured environment blocks all unauthorized third party communications and eliminates the current state of email anonymity. The San Diego-based firm also says that they will soon support real-time online biometric document signature solution for loan applications, tax returns and other financial services documents.
IT professionals with Android mobile devices may want to take a look at the Server & Website Monitor. This app allows you to:
- View all server and site status in one interface
- Check the server and site status details
- View server and site status charts
- Monitor web/email/DNS/FTP/VPN/etc servers
- Monitor websites based on the domain name or IP address
- Manually add and modify HTTP return codes
Microsoft has been aggressively pushing its cloud services, but they still remain committed to on-premise packages as evidenced by their recent release of Exchange Server 2016. The latest version of Microsoft's calendaring and mail server product includes several new features for enterprise customers, including a set of improvements to the web-based Outlook experience, eDiscovery functionality, collaboration and search.
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According to a new survey from Bankrate.com, the average fee consumers pay to withdraw cash from an ATM outside their bank`s network is a record $4.52 per transaction. They note that fees for using an out-of-network ATM have increased 21% over the past five years. Fees vary quite a bit by geography, e.g., in Atlanta out-of-network transactions average $5.15, but only $3.85 in San Francisco.
ATM management solutions are becoming more sophisticated and better able to provide a holistic view of how ATMs are performing. They can determine connection issues, cash and deposit levels, hardware and software inventory, state of health and more - the goal is to make them as efficient and effective as possible. Some observers are predicting that going forward monitoring solutions will move beyond IT Departments to include multiple users in the bank such contact centers, remote tellers and branch staff.
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Mitek released findings from a new survey entitled “Millennials – The Next Mobile Disruptors” that they say reveals that the camera is key for businesses looking to engage with this demographic (consumers ages 18 to 34). Here are some results from the survey:
· Sixty-eight percent would prefer to always use mobile capture instead of manually typing information on their smartphone
· Twenty-eight percent want to enroll for everything from a new credit card to a gym customership by snapping a picture of their driver`s license
· Banking is the top industry where Millennials wish there was more mobile capture functionality (40 percent).
According to ThreatMetrix, the most common type of mobile-device attack is spoofing, where a criminal attempts to impersonate a mobile device. The security firm states that attacks on Android devices accounted for 2.8% of threats, followed by 2.2% for Windows mobile devices, 2.2% for iPhones, and 1.7% for iPads. They note that the scammers can easily bypass browser fingerprinting which attempts to uniquely identify a Web browser using certain data - a technique that many financial institutions use.
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So called "East-West traffic" is data that is primarily driven by servers and virtual machines (VMs) talking to each other and to database systems, storage systems, and other applications in the data center. Many security devices are only designed to catch traffic moving "North-South," but Arista Networks announced a new capability for its CloudVision product called Macro-Segmentation Services (MSS) that addresses this issue. Through CloudVision, Arista customers can dynamically insert security services into the path of traffic, regardless of whether the security device is in a physical or virtual form factor. Arista can redirect a security service to any point in the network by organizing the network services into logical pools. MSS works with next-generation firewalls and devices from Check Point, F5 Networks, Fortinet, Palo Alto, and VMware.
For their “Security of Virtual Infrastructure” report, Kaspersky surveyed over 5,500 companies in 35 countries and found that when virtual infrastructures are involved in a security breach, large and mid-size businesses pay twice as much to recover. An attack on virtualized infrastructures, according to the survey, more frequently results in the loss of important data and the ability to operate essential services, and also in damage to the company's reputation. The three top virtualization platforms in the survey were: VMware (40%), Microsoft (36%), and Citrix (9%). As for open-source platforms, 6% of respondents use Xen, and 3% use KVM.
ManageEngine Password Manager Pro works on desktop machines (but not mobile devices) and keeps passwords in a centralized vault which are then retrieved via a Web interface. It also supports video recording of privileged sessions (AKA session shadowing), and integrates with Active Directory, LDAP, and federated ID management. ManageEngine has an impressive client list that includes VMWare, Walmart, EMC, and NASA.
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Core Systems:
Supporting Omnichannel Delivery with the Core System
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CreditVision Link is a new credit scoring system offered by TransUnion that they claim will cover 95% of adults in the U.S. The new scoring system combines traditional credit performance data with additional info such as property records, tax records, checking and debit account records and payday lending data. The scale runs between 350 and 850 and Transunion said that their new approach could lift the scores of 23 million borrowers now considered subprime into a higher credit status and allow 60 million adults who currently have no credit score to obtain one. The bureau noted that one auto lender that participated in their tests could have approved 24% more loan applications and grown the loan portfolio between 5.7% and 11.5% by using CreditVision Link.
PNC contacted more than 1.2 million customers by phone, email, banner ads and more to invite them into their branches. They took a que from European FIs that rely on appointment setting as a way to build business. The results of their campaign were impressive: 350,000 appointments were booked which resulted in 100,000 new product sales.
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Online Banking/E-Commerce/Website Design
MasterCard is looking to secure online commerce by replacing passwords and PINs with a new suite of card security measures. MasterCard's Identity Check will support fingerprints, 'pay by selfie' facial biometrics, SMS-delivered one-time passwords and other user friendly techniques to help secure identities online. They expect the full suite of Identity Check options to be rolled out to American FIs in 2016.
The big three card networks are currently the only firms involved in the tokenization of payments. But some experts are predicting that the Big 3 will soon face competition as other companies seek to become token service providers. In action, a token provides a random string of digits to mask a real primary account number for a payment account. Likely candidates to compete with Visa, MasterCard and AmEx include payment processors, national or regional networks, and very large issuers.
BB&T has launched a new "U platform" that allows users to build their own online banking portal. Online bankers can set color schemes, profile pictures and which features they can access after logging in. In the future, users will be able to add customizations such as financial education tools, credit scores, stock tickers, weather forecasts, etc. They are also looking into providing remote viewing capabilities for contact center staff to help with support issues.
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Internet performance is increasingly becoming business-critical as more organizations move to the cloud. Teridion is looking to address this issue with their technology that they say improves performance by accelerating any content over the Internet with no coding, devices, or software. The startup has built an overlay network that it calls a Global Cloud Network (GCN) that improves the routing between end users and Teridion customer data centers by improving the transport and routing architecture. Teridion's GCN is a network of virtual routers coordinated by their management system that provides real-time state information of the network, service type, and user`s location.
Polycom has come out with a new video solution called Centro that was designed to improve the effectiveness of meeting rooms. While traditional room-based video conferencing systems are mounted on the wall, Centro is designed to be placed at the center of a room. It includes 360-dgree voice and video technology that automatically tracks the speaker while showing the entire meeting space on the screen. Polycom has also included wireless pairing and proximity sensors to allow workers to integrate mobile devices into the collaborative session.
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Zendesk has launched Satisfaction Prediction which is a machine learning and predictive analytics package designed to help organizations be proactive in catching customer satisfaction issues. The software analyzes both real-time and historical customer-interaction data and then assigns a score. It can look for a specific series of words or phrases in a call and alert supervisors to the fact that the caller is not satisfied. The company says that the machine learning underpinning their Satisfaction Prediction learns from these signals that may even come before negative customer satisfaction, e.g., they consider things like the amount of effort required to resolve an issue, the latency between user and agent responses, and the language used within the call.
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