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Wearables Can Improve Service in the Branch
HSBC employees are using the Samsung Gear S3 smartwatches to improve communication among the three floors of their NYC flagship branch. The watches enable employees to freely communicate throughout building without being tied to fixed locations like desks or office. The built-in microphone and speaker allow them to answer and make calls within the team. The cloud-based, customized Gear S3 devices also feature preset text messages that let employees quickly and discreetly communicate about common customer interactions.
Western Digital has taken the wraps off the world's highest-capacity hard drive, the 15TB Utrastar DC HC620. The 3.5-inch HDD is targeted at the data center where the 15TB drive can be slotted into a 4U rack to create a 900TB storage unit.
How to Detect Hardware-Based Server Bugs
Hardware tampering can be detected by comparing components with a "known good" board. However, there are varying levels of effort that this requires — it is relatively trivial to analyze nonvolatile memory, moderately time consuming to identify ICs on a board by labeling and package type, and exceedingly time consuming and expensive to decap ICs on a board for analysis. Security experts recommend when downloading firmware updates, particularly for system BIOS files, ensure that the downloaded file matches the checksum published by the vendor. Likewise, for software updates, make sure that the update packages are signed using a trusted, published key.
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Carbonite Introduces Data Protection for Virtual and Physical Servers
The refreshed Carbonite Server (called Carbonite Server VM Edition) now features purpose-built backup for virtual machines (VMs) and enables organizations to select, manage and recover their VM data from a single location, the Carbonite Data Protection Console.
How Microsoft's Controlled Folder Access Can Help Stop Ransomware
Microsoft added a new feature to Microsoft Windows client and server products called Controlled Folder Access that gives you another way to mitigate the impact of ransomware. It even prevents unauthorized writes to disk sectors and files stored in memory. In a nutshell, Controlled Folder Access will try to prevent “unsafe” applications from modifying protected files, folders and files stored in memory. The default protected folders include Windows system files and the built-in, common default document and content folders.
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Facial Recognition for ATM Withdrawals
National Australia Bank has teamed up with Microsoft on a proof-of-concept that taps AI to let cardholders make ATM withdrawals using facial recognition and a PIN. The cloud-based application, developed using Azure Cognitive Services, has been designed to improve the ATM user experience, removing the need for a card or even a phone.
KAL, Mastercard Concept Enables Cardless ATM Cash Withdrawal
Mastercard has partnered with KAL ATM Software to introduce two new software innovations designed to provide convenient and secure access to ATM cash anytime and anywhere. The partnership will integrate Mastercard Cardless ATM and Cash Pick-Up products with KAL multivendor ATM software. The Mastercard Cardless ATM concept enables a user to withdraw cash from an ATM using only a mobile phone — no card is needed.
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Visa CEO Predicts 100 Million Contactless Cards in a Year
Visa CEO Alfred Kelly forecasts 100 million Visa contactless cards will be in circulation by the end of fiscal 2019. If that happens, contactless cards would represent nearly 12% of Visa’s U.S. card base of 856 million as of June 30, the latest figures available. That figure includes 521 million debit cards and 335 million credit cards.
Why Mobile-Based Password-Free Authentication Is the Future for Finance
The author contends that personal phones can be leveraged into a robust and easy to use, password-less authentication system for nearly any FI. Known as “Bring Your Own Device” or BYOD, the system circumvents all of the security and logistical challenges associated with traditional authentication models. All of this leaves enterprise networks safer - and with substantially lower operating costs.
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Emailage Rolls out RapidRisk Score for Fraud Detection
Emailage has launched its new RapidRisk Score fraud detection solution, purpose-built to create fast risk analysis for payment processors, card issuers and merchants on every transaction. The company claims that their solution offers response times for fraud risk assessment as low as 30 milliseconds.
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Survey: Marketers Toss out Valuable Location Data
What if seemingly inconsequential data—and location data, in particular—could actually be re-harnessed and used to provide additional revenue-generating opportunities? That’s the concept behind a new report out from the global geolocation data and services provider Digital Element, examining digital data exhaust and the opportunities organizations are missing when they throw away valuable information. Researchers from Digital Element found that 30% of digital marketers don’t know the percentage of data their companies throw away, but 60% believe using an extra quarter of the data they currently discard would result in increased revenue.
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Online Banking/E-Commerce/Website Design
Consumers Are Gradually Losing This Credit Card Perk
According to a recent report by Marketing Strategies International, extraneous benefits like price protection aren’t really driving value for cardholders. Among other conclusions, the report found: 1) 80% of cardholders are “unclear” about the benefits of their credit cards; 2) 52% off cardholders reported they “know little or nothing” about the extra features; and 3) cardholders are looking for no annual fee, cash back, and low interest rates, rather than extra perks like price protection.
Mastercard Forms Partnership with Manufacturers to Deploy Greener Cards
Mastercard and card manufacturers Gemalto, Giesecke+Devrient and IDEMIA have launched the Greener Payments Partnership to establish environmental best practices and reduce first-use PVC plastic in card manufacturing. The group will also ensure best practices around how materials are evaluated, including environmental impact benefits and the ability to meet increasing consumer concerns around the impact of plastic globally.
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Security Should Be a Top Priority When Transitioning to an SD-WAN Solution
Security remains a top concern for an overwhelming majority of IT leaders as they consider upgrading to an SD-WAN solution, according to a new global research report, “Security, Connectivity, and Control: The Challenges and Opportunities of SD-WAN.” Other challenges are complexity (48%), cloud performance (47%), and performance between locations (46%).
CenturyLink Adds Cisco's Viptela Technology for Managed SD-WAN Service
CenturyLink first launched its SD-WAN service in 2015 with Versa Networks, and it also uses Cisco's Meraki SD-WAN technology as part of its managed services offering for enterprises in the U.S. The new solution was designed for CenturyLink customers that prefer Cisco's networking gear.
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Daon Announces Partnership with Avtex to Improve Contact Center Experience
Daon has partnered with customer experience (CX) focused consulting and technology company Avtex to improve contact center experiences for the customers of Avtex clients. Avtex has built an integrated product suite for self-service interactive voice response (IVR) and contact center biometric authentication using Daon’s IdentityX platform. Daon’s use of facial, voice and fingerprint authentication on the mobile device is regarded by Avtex as the optimal mix of security and convenience for securing account access.
Three Keys to Contact Center Workforce Optimization
The author contends that one of the most effective ways to to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and keep callers happy is through workforce optimization (WFO). She covers three WFO components that can help contact center teams evolve, increase productivity, and improve the consumer experience.
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