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Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Twist Combines OLED & Color E-Ink Displays in One Convertible Laptop
The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Twist is old school and new school at the same time. It borrows a convertible twist-hinge design from 2-in-1 laptops from the very early 2000s, but it also packs both an OLED display and color E-Ink screen — giving you the choice of which screen to use. This second display is designed to give you longer battery life. The unit starts at $1,650.
Fortinet Unveils Custom ASIC to Boost Firewall Performance
Fortinet is introducing a new ASIC that promises to meld the security and network functions of its core family of FortiGate firewalls more efficiently and powerfully. The custom chip is 7-nanometer package, called fifth-generation security processing system or FortiSP5, that promises a number of performance improvements for the FortiGate system. They claim that it enables 17x faster firewall performance and 32x faster encryption processes while using 88% less power compared to standard CPUs.
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Microsoft Rolls out ChatGPT-Powered Teams Premium
Microsoft has rolled out a premium Teams messaging offering powered by ChatGPT to simplify meetings using the AI chatbot that has taken Silicon Valley by a storm. The premium service will cost $7 per month in June before increasing to $10 in July, Microsoft said. OpenAI-owned ChatGPT will generate automatic meeting notes, recommend tasks and help create meeting templates for Teams users.
Oracle Launches Cloud Banking Services
Oracle unveiled Banking Cloud Services, a set of six composable cloud native services aimed to help FIs modernize their capabilities. FIs can select any combination of the six services as standalone capabilities or to work within their existing infrastructure. The Banking Cloud Services include: 1) Banking Accounts Cloud Service; 2) Banking Payments Cloud Service; 3) Banking Enterprise Limits and Collateral Management Cloud Service; 4) Banking Origination Cloud Service; 5) Banking Digital Experience Cloud Service; and 6) Banking APIs Cloud Service.
Top 10 Tools for Data Migration
Although data migration is often a grueling, tedious and time-consuming process, with the right data migration tools at your disposal, it doesn’t have to be. Data migration tools can automate various data migration and management workflows, offer self-service interfaces to your team, and offer other features that make the data migration process more secure and seamless. This article lays out 10 top data migration tools for organizations of varying sizes and backgrounds.
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Cloud-Based ATM Service Announced
E-Squared Systems announced the development of a new remote hosting service for financial self-service terminals utilizing ATMIA’s Next Gen ATM architecture. The company is developing the service in collaboration with Genmega, a leading global terminal manufacturer, and with Digital Cash Processing (DCP), an established North American payments gateway. The service aims to reduce the cost and complexity of operating ATMs and kiosks, while expediting the process of adding and upgrading terminal functionality.
How Will Central Bank Digital Currency Impact ATMs?
With many countries examining central bank digital currencies, a question emerges: How will this impact ATMs and cash usage? This article presented that question to a panel of experts and then highlighted their thoughts.
Reverse Vending Machines to Recycle Credit Cards
NatWest, a London-based bank, will install "reverse" vending machines to allow consumers to recycle old credit and debit cards as an effort to reduce plastic waste. The machines also accept plastic bottles and card readers for recycling.
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Hardware Keys Provide Mobile MFA That Can’t Be Phished
Windows Hello, FIDO tokens and passkeys give you the same strong authentication as server-based authentication without having to run a certificate infrastructure. Mobile Azure AD Certificate-Based Access is in public preview and initially it only works with YubiKey security keys that plug in to a USB port: Microsoft is planning to add NFC support, as well as more hardware providers.
Most Consumers Can’t Live Without Their Mobile Banking App, Study Shows
Two out of three Chase survey respondents reported that they "can’t live without their banking app." Consumers are increasingly monitoring their credit and taking advantage of discount offers and rewards as well as checking their accounts, paying bills and depositing checks. About 87% of consumers are using their digital banking app at least once a month, which is 2% more than last year.
Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and four other banks have teamed up to launch a digital wallet that people can use to shop online. Users should be able to use the new product to pay at online checkout with a wallet that is connected to their debit and credit cards. Early Warning Services (EWS), a bank-owned company that runs the money-transfer service Zelle, will be in charge of managing the digital wallet. The wallet, whose name has not yet been decided, will remain independent from Zelle.
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Skyhawk Launches Platform to Provide Threat Detection and Response Across Multi-Cloud Environments
Cloud threat detection vendor Skyhawk Security has released a platform designed to address alert fatigue that provides cloud detection and response (CDR) across multi-cloud environments. The company says the Synthesis platform is being released on a “freemium” basis—the base version is available at no cost, but supplement features can be purchased. Skyhawk claims the platform improves upon products focused on identifying numerous static cloud security misconfigurations by employing machine learning (ML) to find correlated sequences of high-priority runtime events and identify paths of least resistance that are exploited to compromise cloud infrastructure.
FIs Are Suffering from Increasingly Sophisticated Cyberattacks
Contrast Security recedntly released its Cyber Bank Heists report, an annual report that exposes the cybersecurity threats facing the financial sector. Financial sector security leaders from around the world - in a series of interviews - revealed that: * 60% were victimized by destructive attacks; * 64% saw an increase in application attacks, while 50% experienced attacks against their APIs; * 48% experienced an increase in wire transfer fraud; and * 50% have detected campaigns to steal non-public market information.
Guardz Debuts with Cybersecurity-as-a-Service
Guardz, a Tel Aviv-based startup promising a broad range of out-of-the-box cybersecurity solutions for small and medium-size businesses (SMBs), announced availability of its flagship product. The premise of the company’s main offering is tight API integration with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. Guardz provides email scanning, endpoint security, identity management, browser filtering, cloud application security and awareness and training programs for users.
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Shifts in Retail Banking Strategy Spur Product & Branch Innovation
Significant changes in how FIs conceive, design and promote consumer banking products are starting to develop, according to Accenture. As this trend solidifies, more FIs will craft packages of products and services similar to Amazon Prime accounts, where accountholders gain advantages by bringing multiple relationships to the same institution. Accenture also predicts that radical personalization will start to occur in coming years, with dynamic packaging tailored to an individual’s needs and pricing tied to the overall banking relationship.
Today’s Social Media Requires a Deft Touch
More and more FIs are facing decisions about how to weigh in on social issues or other current events on their social media accounts. This article offers five tips for dealing with social media in tumultuous times: 1) Check scheduled content; 2) Consider accounthoders; 3) Think hard before you post; 4) See the bigger picture, and 5) Exercise caution with religion and politics.
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Online Banking/E-Commerce/Website Design
Digital Banking Transformation Trends for 2023
Digital transformation can help FIs improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their operations. Additionally, digital banking transformation can help them to better compete in a rapidly changing financial ecosystem. Finally, digital banking transformation helps FIs reduce costs and increase profitability. This article goes on to take a deep dive into digital banking trends for this year.
Four Major Digital Banking Trends to Watch out for in 2023
The author predicts that 2023 will see a slowdown to fintech’s once-meteoric ascent. For traditional FIs, he says that a hat-trick of higher interest rates, less FinTech competition and a likely increase in regulatory scrutiny will possibly mean that many incumbents will find this year less challenging. He concludes that FinTechs are far from a write-off, however, and that the firms that will survive and will be stronger for it.
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Tips for FIs Adopting Cloud Deployment in 2023
Historically, FIs have relied upon on-premise data archives to meet compliance requirements. However, on-premise solutions also make adoption of emerging advanced technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence more difficult to integrate. As we continue to see these advancements being implemented through the financial industry, it’s important that FIs have the ability to adopt these technologies quickly and seamlessly. The author lays out some ways that FIs can overcome challenges to cloud adoption in this interesting article.
Microsoft's AI Search Engine Uses ChatGPT, Giving Bing a Makeover
Microsoft’s Bing search engine is now accelerated with artificial intelligence, thanks to a connection with the very hot ChatGPT content generation tool. Instead of just getting back a list of links for potentially relevant websites when typing in a question, the new version of Bing can provide an easily comprehensible summary of all the information written in simple English. But, as with CHATGPT in general, accuracy is not guaranteed. And, not to be outdone, Google has already announced an AI and natural language-enhanced version of its Google search engine called Bard that will be available very shortly – though it’s already run into challenges with accuracy.
Zoho Unveils Trident Unified Communications Platform
Zoho is rolling out a new, integrated communications and productivity suite, aiming to centralize common app functions such as messaging, phone and video calls, and task management. The goal is to release workers from the responsibility of searching through mail, messaging and other apps individually — and a voice service that works across its Cliq collaboration app, Zoho Meeting conferencing, and even direct phone calls and SMS messages.
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Observe.AI Launches Real-Time AI
Observe.AI announced the launch of its new Real-Time AI product suite – designed to help agents succeed in their interactions and boost productivity with live guidance, supervisor coaching, and automated actions for after-call work. Observe.AI’s Real-Time AI provides end-to-end conversation intelligence to the contact center that helps maximize agent performance and productivity – before, during, and after consumer interactions. Observe.AI claims to leverage historical insights and agent performance data to personalize live guidance and coaching.
Key Trends in Agent Productivity
Agent productivity is always top of mind for contact center leaders. This article interviews contact center operations and technology authority Laura Sikorski and gets her views on what agent productivity maximization is all about. She concludes that "an agent can only be productive if they work for a company that has a positive culture. One that pays well, engages them to participate in process changes and/or development, has clearly defined career paths, and which provides appropriate training (product and soft skills), eLearning, coaching, and job tools to satisfy and meet the expectations of their customers."
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