Credit Union tech-talk News

June 30 - July 4, 2008

• 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

* Espeeco FCU Chooses NewSolutions by Share One
* Proofpoint Acquires Fortiva
* Enhanced Software Products Launches New Website
* Three CUs Choose StreamLend Velocity

Share One, a CUSO with a client base of credit unions ranging from $20 million to over $1 billion, announced that Espeeco Federal Credit Union in Bakersfield, CA has chosen their NewSolutions core processing system. Espeeco FCU serves the financial needs of Union Pacific Railroad employees as well as numerous SEGs, and will also utilize Share One's online banking and OFAC software.

Proofpoint has acquired Fortiva, a seller of e-mail archiving services designed to speed up the process of responding to legal discovery requests. Proofpoint is a leading provider of unified email security and data loss prevention solutions.

Enhanced Software Products, a credit union core data processing provider with more than a decade of experience, has partnered with branding firm, Ripcord, to launch ESP’s new website: www.espsolution.net. Ripcord, a Denver-based Branding and Marketing group worked with ESP to develop a new website as well as to further define the Spokane-based data processor’s market scope and target audience. 

IA Systems, an Open Solutions business unit and a provider of lending software and services to credit unions, announced that Unitus Community Credit Union, Gesa Credit Union and Kitsap Credit Union have selected StreamLend Velocity to fulfill their need for a paperless, end-to-end loan origination system. Open Solutions is a leading provider of integrated enabling technologies for credit unions across the United States, Canada and other international markets.

Hardware News

Hewlett-Packard and startup Fusion-io announced plans to jointly enable the latter's solid-state memory technology to run across HP server products. The partnership will allow a version of Fusion-io's ioDrive NAND product to be plugged into HP server PCI-express slots to add as much as 640GB of flash storage capacity on a single card. HP says that the Fusion-io flash storage technology can boost performance by as much as 40 percent for some applications. 

Toshiba has launched an ultraportable laptop that it claims is the world's lightest. The company said the full-featured Portégé R500-S5007V weighs just 2.4 pounds and measures .77 inches at its thinnest point. In contrast, Apple's MacBook Air weighs 3 pounds and Lenovo's Thinkpad X300 weighs around 2.93 pounds. The company also claimed that the new laptop was the first to include a 128GB solid-state drive rather than a hard drive. At $2,999, the laptop comes with a 1.33-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo U7700 processor, 2MB of cache and 2GB of RAM. 

Tired of going server to server to review event logs? Worried about passing your next audit? Tracking security events becoming a full time job? It’s time to take a look at ELM Log Manager. 

This centralized system monitoring and event log management solution provides the automation busy system administrators need for event log consolidation and flexible reporting as well as real-time alerts to notify you of issues which require immediate attention. 

Be proactive - get started today! Download a full-featured 30-day trial and experience for yourself the ease and efficiency of automated system monitoring with ELM Log Manager.

www.tntsoftware.com/tt2

TNT Software, Inc.
800-546-0878
info@tntsoftware.com 

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ATMs/Kiosks

PSI Corp. is rolling out E-Banking Kiosks that enable users to purchase gifts cards, phone cards and debit cards; to obtain standard ATM services; and to permit bill paying and payroll check cashing. Each Kiosk will have a 32 inch digital screen with advanced program capability. The PSI Cash Express Kiosks/ATMs will be undergoing ninety-day field tests in selected areas. The firm is targeting supermarkets, convenience stores and credit unions with their machines.

ABI Research predicts a bright future for wireless ATMs. The firm states that the clear advantages of cellular connectivity are proving persuasive - it allows greater flexibility in deployment and better functionality with faster service and better management. 

Credit Union 24, the largest credit union-owned point-of-sale (POS) network in the U.S., announced it has extended its relationship with the Allpoint Network and will continue to offer the CU HERE Premium network and its nearly 50,000 surcharge-free ATMs to its credit union participants. CU24 signed a multi-year deal with Allpoint to ensure that their participants are able to continue offering their members surcharge-free access to on- and off-premise ATMs across the nation. 

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When an Illinois driver gets his or her photo taken at a Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), the picture is sent to an enormous database and compared to other photos to find potential identity fraud. The Illinois DMV's biometric-based facial recognition technology is part of a growing trend that has spread to approximately 20 states. In the past 10 years, Illinois DMV's facial recognition program has nabbed more than 5,000 fraudsters: 4,600 involved people with one fraudulent identification, and 600 cases involved people with two or more fraudulent identifications.

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Several wireless technologies are contending to become the next-generation high speed transport systems: WiMAX, Long-Term Evolution (LTE) and Ultra Mobile Broadband (UMB). Many wireless observers contend that the frontrunners for wide area networks are WiMAX and LTE. Despite Qualcomm’s aspirations to have UMB run at more than 200Mbps, more than twice the eventual intended speeds of LTE and WiMAX, many predict that its chances of success are slim. Meanwhile, an Intel executive has said that he would like to see the competing standards WiMAX and LTE be unified into one standard. Sean Maloney, an EVP at Intel, says that two standards should be harmonized because they are about "80 percent" similar but that WiMAX is a couple years ahead of LTE. 

Firethorn announced that BECU (Boeing Employees’ Credit Union) plans on launching the Firethorn mobile wallet application in the first quarter of 2009. BECU will enable its members to check their account balances, transfer funds and view and pay bills through their mobile devices. Future service capabilities will include more advanced mobile transactions and mobile commerce.

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If your credit union would like to deploy data loss prevention (DLP) tools, but haven't found the time or the budget, then you may want to consider some free open source applications. Some widely used discovery tools include Cornell’s Spider, Virginia Tech’s Find_SSN (and Find_CCN), the University of Texas’ Sensitive Number Finder (SENF), and the University of Illinois’ Firefly. These tools are primarily used for finding SSNs and credit card numbers stored on computers and servers. Unfortunately, none of these freely available "discovery" tools can yet identify sensitive data in transit because they are only designed to work with data at rest.

Google, Microsoft and PayPal are among a group of technology firms that are joining forces to promote the use of virtual online identity cards - rather than user names and passwords - for conducting transactions via the Web. The founders of the Information Card Foundation, which also include Equifax, Novell and Oracle - say the non-profit organization aims to promote "simpler, more secure and more open digital identity on the Internet". The foundation aims to "promote the rapid build-out and adoption of Internet-enabled digital identities using information cards" - which will be similar to real world IDs like physical drivers' licenses - that can be used instead of usernames and passwords when conducting online transactions or entering sites.

At the recent Hewlett-Packard Technology Forum & Expo, there were some interesting discussions on business continuity planning. One panel looked at unanticipated problems in disaster planning and we will cover their insights in the July issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe now.

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Online Banking:

Online Banking…. Catering to Your Most Desirable Members

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

Exstream - http://www.exstream.com   Read Jerry Driscoll's comments:   http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/Exstream.pdf

Fiserv - http://www.cu7.fiserv.com Read Dave Selina's comments:     http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/Fiserv.pdf

Fiserv - http://www.cu7.fiserv.com Read Jay Slavin's comments:     http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/Galaxy.pdf

Gartner - http://www.gartner.com   Read David Schehr's comments:   http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/Gartner.pdf

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

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

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

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

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Despite billions of dollars being spent each year on BI (business intelligence) software, the tools remain largely in the hands of a limited number of power users and business analysts. Many industry observers think that will change as more vendors strive to make their applications more affordable and easier to use. For example, the third version of open source BI vendor Jaspersoft's Business Intelligence Suite has a new Web 2.0-style browser interface and functionality that enables business users to make ad-hoc queries in a point-and-click fashion. Meanwhile, Datawatch is putting their Monarch BI Server into beta. It takes data from static reports and business documents, such as PDFs, and pushes it into spreadsheets, summaries, and charts. The company positions the product as an alternative for organizations without the resources or desire to deal with more complex BI implementations. Pricing will start at $10,995. 

Lubbock-based Texas Tech Federal Credit Union is offering students a $500 loan towards the purchase of a bicycle from a local bike shop. The term of the loan is one year and they are trying to guarantee a 24-hour-period turnaround on the loan.

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A new crop of non-bank online personal finance sites such as Banzai, Mint, and Wesabe are combining traditional account aggregation services with Web 2.0 concepts. These sites are garnering considerable attention from the media and gaining users. However, new TowerGroup research finds that they are often missing one critical component – adequate fraud prevention capabilities to protect both the consumer and their financial institutions from account takeover and identity theft. TowerGroup believes that these nonbank online personal finance sites will likely become the next target of phishers and other fraudsters looking to gain easy access to consumer banking data to commit fraud.

CheckFree is looking to upgrade their Web RXP system to allow credit unions to offer their members the option of paying their bills online via the credit union's credit or debit card. This option could drive additional interchange revenue for the credit union, as well as increase member convenience. However, some observers point out that card-funded transactions have many barriers and challenges to overcome, and that credit unions may find that charging for expedited bill payments will be more straightforward and lucrative at least in the short term.

CO-OP Financial Services will begin providing travel and youth reloadable cards, available in Visa and MasterCard versions, to credit unions in July. The CO-OP Travel Card is an alternative to traveler's checks, and the CO-OP Youth Card is designed for credit unions to build relationships with young members. Both cards can be used at point-of-sale locations and to get cash at 25,000 surcharge-free CO-OP Network ATMs. 

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Founded in 2005, FastSoft aims to speed file transfers across the WAN by working around TCP's packet-loss limitations. When its FastTCP protocol detects congestion on a link, it makes adjustments to avoid throttling transmissions back dramatically. The company employs a single-appliance model, so customers have to install an appliance only on one end of a WAN connection. 

Esnatech recently announced that its Telephony Office-LinX won a 2007 Product of the Year Award from Communications Solutions magazine. The Telephony Office-LinX version 7.0 creates a infrastructure that supports local mobility, and also scheduling and filtering. Esnatech says that their design allows for call screening, find me/follow me and broadcast functionalities. Their system enables employees to access all messages such as voice, e-mail, and fax from one inbox via any device — be it a desktop, Internet, cell phone or any wireless device.

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Call centers are inherently fast-paced and challenging places to work, and thus it is not surprising that they suffer from high levels of agent turnover, absenteeism and burnout. To counter such ongoing problems, many centers implement some form of incentive program. We will cover some creative ones in the July issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe today.

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Catch Tom and Bill Rogers, Associate Editor of Credit Union tech-talk at the following conferences in 2008:

October 15-18, Las Vegas - Firefighters' National Credit Union Summit

November 13-15, New Orleans - Credit Union InfoTech Conference

June 4-5, Lake Las Vegas - Credit Union InfoSecurity Conference

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