Credit Union tech-talk News

July 9 - July 13, 2007

• General News
• Hardware News
• Software Updates
• ATMs/Kiosks
• Biometric Digest Highlights
• Wireless World
• Security Section
• Leaders Roundtable
• Technology and Marketing
• Online Banking/E-Commerce/
  Website Design
• Internet Access
• Call Centers
• Conferences

* Credit Union 24 Signs Tower Federal Credit Union 
* Websense Launches Websense Express
* eCU Technologies Signs Four More CUs to UPost
* Catbird Security Partners with Stanford FCU

Credit Union 24, the nation's only credit union-owned point of sale (POS) network, announced that they have signed the $1.6 billion Tower Federal Credit Union to their cooperative EFT network. In addition to national POS, members of the Laurel, Md.-headquartered credit union gain access to approximately 3500 Credit Union 24 ATMs in Maryland, 328 of which are surcharge-free CU HERE ATMs.

Websense has launched a new solution, Websense Express, priced and optimized for mid-sized organizations. Websense Express software is designed to protect organizations from emerging Web-based threats, to enforce Internet use policies, and to mitigate information theft.

eCU Technologies, an automated financial service technology provider for credit unions, announced the signings of four more credit unions to its UPost online deposit service: Firstmark Credit Union; Clearstar Financial Credit Union; Corning Credit Union; and United Methodist Credit Union. UPost allows credit union members to make electronic deposits and gain immediate access to those funds, while mailing in the actual check at a later date. 

Catbird Security announced that Stanford Federal Credit Union has signed on with them to utilize their V-Agent system. The $750 million credit union first implemented the company’s standard Catbird Agent on its main network, then added the V-Agent as they expanded their network coverage.

Hardware News

Dell recently introduced new desktop and laptops and surprisingly ushered in the end of Dell's longtime Dimension brand - both Dell's mainstream desktops and laptops will now carry the Inspiron name. The desktops and laptops rolled out include a new and improved XPS laptop (XPS m1330), a new 14-inch Inspiron laptop (Inspiron 1420), and the Inspiron 530 and 531 desktops. The machines include both Intel and AMD chips, depending on the model number.

E-mail attachments seem to be getting bigger all of the time, and they can be a real pain for both systems administrators and users to manage. Also, the bigger your e-mail store gets, the more complicated your backup and restore jobs become. Some organizations are turning to an emerging category of technology products called e-mail attachment appliances (or caching appliances or secure file transfer appliances). Learn more about how these boxes work in the August issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe now.

Most network managers accept that they will experience a certain amount of downtime on their networks, but obviously they want to minimize it all costs. While many senior managers would tend to think that hardware failures would be the main cause of downtime, research from business service management vendor Managed Objects reveals otherwise. The company surveyed hundreds of IT managers across the US to discover what brings their networks down and the results show that homegrown applications are behind a majority of downtime in today's networks. About 61% of survey respondents said applications were behind most of their network downtime, compared to just 21% that reported hardware as the cause. And nearly 20% were uncertain of the cause of downtime at their organizations.

MagTek®’s ExpressCard 1000 is the industry’s first “ALL-IN-ONE” instant issuance and complete card personalization platform forCredit, Debit, ATM, and Financial Gift Cards designed to fit securely and comfortably within a branch location.

For the first time, card personalization features such as color card-printing, magstripe encoding, smartcard encoding, card embossing, indent printing, and foil tipping have been combined into a single device which provides both the physical and logical security features required to meet the demands of a branch or retailer’s card issuing environment.

Equipped with MagnePrint® card authentication technology (www.magneprint.com), the ExpressCard 1000 offers the capability to capture the card's reference MagnePrint at the time of card issuance so that reference value may be used in conjunction with complementary risk management analytics with card present transactions. The ExpressCard 1000 can be connected as a peripheral to MagTek’s IntelliCAT and MCAPS 3000 PIN selection and instant issuance software suites creating a complete and secure card issuing platform.

For more information on ExpressCard 1000, go to www.magtek.com or call your MagTek sales representative at 800-788-6835.

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ATMs/Kiosks

Triton announced that they are now taking orders for the FT7000, their first full-function, through-the-wall ATM for financial institutions. With an envelope depository and an expansion bay for future upgrades such as check scanning, the FT7000 is fully XFS compliant and runs Triton's Prism ATM software with Diebold 912 Emulation support. With Web functionality, Prism controls user interactions at the ATM, allowing for customization of ATM screens with advertising and marketing messages, and multimedia content without host intervention. The unit includes a 15-inch color display and is available as a walk-up or drive-up model. 

In a move that can help save paper costs and the environment, Kanzaki Specialty Papers has entered into an agreement with NCR to license NCR’s simultaneous two-sided thermal paper technology. This license gives Kanzaki the ability to make, use and sell NCR’s patented two-sided thermal paper worldwide which should help speed the roll out of the paper to ATM deployers and businesses using point-of-sale terminals and self-service kiosks.

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Athena Smartcard Solutions is introducing the ASEDrive IIIe USB Bio KB, a combined biometric smart card keyboard which incorporates the UPEK TouchChip TCS2 fingerprint sensor, enabling strong user authentication and password-free logon to PCs. The USB keyboard and smart card reader comply with the PC/SC standards, Windows 2000, XP and Vista, Linux and MAC. The ASEDrive IIIe Bio keyboard offers flash upgradeability, essential in keyboard smart card readers so that future updates to smart card technology will not require the replacement of the keyboard. 

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Secure Computing announced the availability of SafeWord MobilePass, a new software authenticator that allows a user access to Virtual Private Networks (VPN), Citrix, Outlook and a number of other applications through one-time passcodes generated on their mobile phone or PDA. It's an alternative to the hardware token, but it requires the company's SafeWord PremierAccess 4.0 authentication management software on the back end for remote access using Microsoft's Active Directory. The user installs the app on a phone, pushes a button, and it generates a one-time password for logging onto the corporate network. and Secure Computing plans to make the software available for Windows-based laptops and desktop machines as well. 

Nortel Networks announced its plan for creating the "Unwired Enterprise," which involves integrating WiFi into existing wired infrastructure. Nortel said it will bring to market WiFi products based on the 802.11n draft specification once it's ratified as a standard. The idea is to combine WiFi and mesh systems, switches and routers embedded with wireless capability and a unified network management platform. For instance, Nortel will integrate WiFi functionality directly with the Ethernet switch, as opposed to offering stand-alone equipment like a wireless access point or a router.

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According to the RSA Anti-Fraud Command Center, fraudsters have a new phishing tool at their disposal. The new kit is a single file which creates an entire phishing site on a compromised server when “double-clicked” on, similar to “.exe” installation files. The kit is a single PHP code file, which is run on the compromised server once, and automatically creates the relevant directories and installs all of the files which are associated with the specific phishing site. Within seconds after running the file, a complete phishing site is “live”. Phishers who use the kit need only access the compromised server once, which decreases the risk of being identified.

Even though data breaches seem to be a daily occurrence, congressional auditors can link only a few identity thefts to the breaches. That's primarily because links are so hard to find that nobody knows how frequently security lapses lead to fraud, the Government Accountability Office said. At the federal level, investigators questioned the FBI, Secret Service, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "Representatives of all these agencies told us that their investigations of data breaches do not typically allow them to fully ascertain how stolen data are used," the GAO said. "Similarly, they noted that investigations of identity theft do not always reveal the source of the data used to commit the crime."

Some security experts say that a data breach isn’t the worst thing that could happen to your credit union, but most agree that reacting poorly to the incident could be. We have gathered some Dos and Don’ts that can help minimize damage and quickly restore member confidence. We will cover them in the August issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe today.

MAGENSA™ is a trusted verification authority (TVA) that provides real-time remote-hosted credential authentication services. These services enable credit unions, financial institutions, businesses, and government agencies to integrate PCI DSS and FFIEC multi-factor authentication and end-to-end data encryption capabilities into their existing processing environments without the need for substantial financial investments or massive changes to the existing infrastructure.

Specifically tailored to enhance the security of internet banking and ATM applications, MAGENSA delivers unprecedented security and authentication using the familiar magstripe card credentials (secure tokens) that a credit union has already issued to its members. MAGENSA is powered by the trusted and proven card authentication technology known as MagnePrint® (www.magneprint.com). MagnePrint differentiates a members’ authentic magstripe card from an altered or counterfeit version, transforming the traditional magstripe card into a powerful security token.

MAGENSA’s Secure Data Center (SDC), a reliable 24x7 operations center that is maintained 365 days a year, simplifies the integration of data decryption and MagnePrint scoring into existing websites, and allows for data federation across institutional domains.

For more information on MAGENSA, please visit www.magensa.net or call 877.MAGENSA.

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Online Banking: 

Embraced by Members - The Next Steps

Digital Resolve - http://www.digital-resolve.net Read Dennis Maicon's comments: http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/DigitalResolve.pdf

GalaxyPlus - http://www.galaxyplus.com   Read Jay Slavin's comments:     http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/GalaxyPlus.pdf

Harland Financial Solutions - http://www.harlandfinancialsolutions.com   Read Niles Bay's comments:   http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/HFS.pdf

Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com Read Greg Haislip's comments: http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/Microsoft.pdf

Open Solutions - http://www.opensolutions.com   Read Michael D. Nicastro's comments: http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/OSI.pdf

uMonitor - http://www.towergroup.com   Read George Tubin's comments:   http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/TowerGroup.pdf

uMonitor - http://www.umonitor.com   Read Dinesh Sheth's comments:   http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/uMonitor.pdf

USERS - http://www.users.com   Read Eric Panepinto's comments:   http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/USERS.pdf

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Visa plans to roll out new, highly customized incentive and reward programs based on more detailed consumer information, including data on purchases, buying habits, and retailer loyalty. Visa is able to do this because of their multi-year upgrade and modernization of its payment processing systems that now permits "account-level processing." Visa's payment processing system - Visa Integrated Payments - can now manage transactions in real time using the entire 16-digit credit card number, rather than the six-digit bank identification number (BIN) that has traditionally been used. 

Boulder Valley Credit Union has installed a 10-kilowatt solar powered system at their Arapahoe Road branch, and is celebrating the installation with low rates on loans financing solar systems for their members. The $140 million credit union also offers other special green loans, as well as energy efficiency tips for their members.

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Abound Resources of Austin has launched RightTech Select, an online solution that guides credit union executives through the planning, vendor selection and contract negotiation process for Remote Deposit Capture. Remote deposit capture, also called remote capture, remote image deposit or merchant capture, permits business members to transmit check images to credit union, avoiding the need to go into a branch to deposit checks.

Banks in New Zealand are seeking access to customer PCs used for online banking transactions to verify whether they have enough security protection. Under the terms of a new banking Code of Practice, banks may request access in the event of a disputed transaction to see if security protection in is place and up to date. Liability for any loss resulting from unauthorized Internet banking transactions rests with the customer if they have "used a computer or device that does not have appropriate protective software and operating system installed and up-to-date, [or] failed to take reasonable steps to ensure that the protective systems, such as virus scanning, firewall, antispyware, operating system and antispam software on [the] computer, are up-to-date." 

Revolutionary Convergence of Security Technology for Secure Internet Banking!

MagneSafe^TM P55 is a portable card reader/authenticator with four key technologies for secure online banking: Cardholder Data Encryption, MagnePrint^® card authentication technology, Website Authentication and Track 1, 2 and 3 card reading capabilities. In conjunction with MagneSafe^TM, the MagneSafe P55 is designed to offer secure, multifactor authentication for Internet banking, empowering consumers with the freedom and confidence of knowing that their transactions are protected anytime, anywhere.

MAGENSA, a Trusted Verification Authority that provides real-time, remote-hosted credential authentication services, allows credit unions to integrate PCI DSS and FFIEC compliant multifactor authentication, data encryption, website authentication, and data federation capabilities without the need for substantial financial investments or massive changes to the existing infrastructure.

For more information about the MagneSafe P55 or MAGENSA, visit www.magensa.net, or call 877.MAGENSA.  

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The trixbox Appliance from Fonality, an open source telephony company, has been named a 2007 TMC Labs Innovation Award winner. The trixbox Appliance is priced at $999 and comes standard with two 80 GB hard drives and a Pentium 4 CPU. The appliance is targeted at businesses with five to 500 employees and can provide high-quality phone calls with VoIP, digital and analog connectivity options. The company says that the appliance comes pre-loaded, tested and configured, which means that minimal set-up is needed.

Optimization is a constant worry of IT Departments who need to make unruly applications - never designed to run over anything but a high-speed LAN (local area network) - perform smoothly on the WAN (wide area network). Cisco has shipped more than 2 million ISRs [Integrated Service Router] since their introduction in September 2004 which they say validates their approach to optimizing WAN connections. Learn more about Cisco's approach in the August issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe now. 

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Text messaging has become a convenient way to communicate while on the go, especially for younger members. In response to this need, a company called Chat Goblin has launched a new Web-based desktop application that gives contact center personnel the ability to easily communicate one-to-one with mobile consumers via text messages. The system, which is compatible with all major wireless carriers, maintains a "session" between the service rep and the mobile member, allowing a dialogue and conversation. The solution also tracks and manages multiple conversations and stores them as records for future access.

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Catch Tom and Bill Rogers, Associate Editor of Credit Union tech-talk at the following conferences in 2007:

August 9-10, Pasadena - Financial Technology Solutions International Technology Forum

October 10-13, Albuquerque - Firefighters' National Credit Union Summit

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