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Credit Union tech-talk News
August 4 - August 8, 2008
General News
* American Spirit FCU Partners with Share One
* Harland Financial Solutions and Compliance Coach Form Alliance
* Xtension Call Center Adds Outbound Member Calls
* FedFinancial FCU Implements Digital Dialogue’s Outbound Program
Fiserv announced that it has signed five credit union clients to core processing contracts. POLAM FCU of Los Angeles, California has chosen to implement the Fiserv Premier system; Cooperativa de Ahorro Credito de Santa Isabel of Santa Isabel, Puerto Rico selected the Fiserv Reliance system; Southern Chautauqua FCU of Lakewood, New York, also chose Premier; Synergy Eastex FCU of Longview, Texas will make the move from in-house system to service bureau when it converts to the Fiserv OnCU system; and ACE CU of Mason City, Iowa has selected the CubicsPlus core processing system.
Share One, a CUSO that has been a leading developer of credit union management software systems since 1974, announced that American Spirit Federal Credit Union is ready to convert to their NewSoutions core system. The Newark, DE-based credit union said that they chose Share One for their user friendly technology, excellent pricing, and commitment to communication and support.
Compliance Coach, a provider of automated regulatory compliance solutions to the financial services industry, announced that Harland Financial Solutions will market its leading software, CompliancePal. CompliancePal is a software solution that enables compliance with the FACT Act Identity Theft Red Flags Rule.
Xtend, a multi-owned CUSO formed in 2002, announced that its Xtension Call Center is maintaining its steady growth of credit union clients and has recently added several new services for better serving members. These services included handling various inbound member calls as well as outbound calls via the Member Reach Plus service. Xtend says that since 2006, Member Reach had delivered over 1 million messages electronically to members, triggered by a series of pre-defined events such as loans reaching maturing, new memberships and more.
Digital Dialogue, a PSCU Financial Services company and nationwide provider of 24/7 call center operations and software solutions to credit unions, recently extended its outbound program to Rockville, Md.-based FedFinancial Federal Credit Union, which provides financial services to federal employees and their family members in the Washington, D.C. and Baltimore areas. The program helps the credit union welcome new members with personalized phone calls, identify lead generation opportunities, conduct surveys and reach out to inactive/dormant accounts for their first mortgage loans.
Hardware News
Dell just introduced an ultra-small desktop that the company says is 80 percent smaller than standard minitower desktops. The Hybrid will run Intel's Pentium dual-core and Core 2 Duo processors, and support up to 4GB of RAM and up to 320GB of hard drive storage. It will also include Gigabit Ethernet and optional wireless networking. It will come preloaded with the Windows Vista OS. The Studio Hybrid mini-desktop also uses 70 percent less power than a typical desktop, the company claims. Pricing starts at $499.
A comprehensive feature set and a competitive price help make the OmniView SMB KVM-over-IP switch hard to beat for credit unions in need of an affordable keyboard-video-mouse switch for their server room or data center. The Belkin switch includes native CAT5 support and can be used to manage up to 248 servers (via daisy-chaining) from a single console. The installation is straightforward, and the browser-based interface used to access different servers is easy to use. It also includes BIOS-level access to connected servers, 128-bit SSL encryption, and support for serial devices.
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Hardware News Sponsored by
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Software Updates
Effectively deployed power management software can yield annual energy savings of $25 to $30 per desktop computer, according to some experts. The tools allow the computer to turn off the processor and hard drive after they have been idle for a few minutes, and put the whole computer into standby after 30 minutes. That reduces the energy consumed by a PC from roughly 100 watts to 40 watts with the power tools enabled. The tools, from companies like Faronics, Scriplogic, and Veridiem, range in price from $15 to $20 per computer, or you can try a free utility called LocalCooling from Uniblue Research Labs.
Smaller credit unions may want to consider Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express for their database needs. Granted, SQL Server Express doesn’t offer as many features as the full blown SQL Server product, but it is free. Microsoft includes 10 database schemas that take the guesswork out of creating small database projects, plus they include a wealth of sample databases, tutorials, online help, and other free training tools.
DriverAgent is a Web-based package that scans your computer and presents you with a list of the drivers it found along with icons providing information for each driver. The program explains that even if a driver update is available for download, that doesn't mean you need to install it - you have the option of downloading the update for backup purposes. In addition to the "good" (no update needed) and "bad" (time to update) categories, DriverAgent may indicate a driver is questionable. In other words, the program could not determine whether the file is out of date or not. DriverAgent and its Driver Updates website charge a $30 membership fee.
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Software Section Sponsored by
Raddon Financial Group (RFG)
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ATMs/Kiosks
Nautilus Hyosung has signed an agreement to acquire Triton Systems, a global ATM provider having its primary presence in North America, from Dover Corporation. Nautilus Hyosung, based in Korea, is a global manufacturer of complete ATM solutions, including hardware, software and services to the ATM deployers.
The Electronic Funds Transfer Association, in conjunction with the ATM Industry Association, are working together to sponsor a conference this fall on ATM security. The conference will be held in Houston Sept 8 - 10. Sessions will cover such topics as: hardware protections; software- and server-monitoring tools; prepaid-card security; PCI standards; debit-card fraud; ATM skimming; and the security of RFID technology and mobile-phone transactions.
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Biometric Digest Highlights - WWW.BIODIGEST.COM
Access has introduced a range of biometric programmable keyboards with integral DigitalPersona "U.are.U" fingerprint readers. Users place their finger on a red illuminated window to activate the fingerprint reader. On-board electronics encrypt the 512dpi resolution scanned image before sending it through the USB interface. Access says these readers recognize even the most difficult fingerprints accurately and rapidly, regardless of placement angle, and that the built-in intelligence rejects counterfeit and printed fingerprint images.
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Wireless World
Meru Networks is introducing an RF Barrier product that they say will keep your corporate WLAN signals from seeping through building walls into parking lots and other public areas where eavesdroppers might lurk. The product comprises a Meru AP-200 802.11a/b/g access point with special packet-inspection software plus a 180-degree directional antenna. You mount it outside the building – at least one AP/antenna pair per outside wall per channel in use – and the device corrupts 11a/b/g signals emanating from authorized MAC addresses, rendering them useless to outsiders.
Numerous credit unions have adopted mobile banking, while others are still undecided. Some observers argue that there are as many reasons to wait as there are to jump in to the mobile banking fray. We will discuss both sides of this debate in the September issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe now.
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Security Section
According to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (PRC), many identity-theft monitoring services are overpriced and don't provide anything close to full protection against identity theft or credit fraud. They recommend that consumers who think they need monitoring services should first make sure that there are no free or lower-cost alternatives that they can take advantage of before purchasing a service. Monitoring services are most useful, PRC says, in helping individuals detect new account fraud resulting from someone using their name, SSN and other personal information to open credit card, mobile phone or other accounts. However in general, monitoring services fail to protect against a variety of other kinds of fraud, such as the misuse of existing accounts, debit and check card fraud, or in situations where an imposter might use another individual's SSN to obtain employment.
ArcMail Technology, a leading provider of email archiving and management technology, announced the availability of the first email archiving appliance with built-in Blu-Ray backup and email export capability. ArcMail Defender is a stand-alone network appliance offering up to 16 terabytes of raw storage and data integrity technology. The firm says that the Blu-Ray drives will enable organizations to perform backups of their email archive directly to high capacity, high bandwidth random access removable storage, rather than to much slower tapes, making both backup and restore operations much faster. Using their DirectExport technology, ArcMail says that an administrator can search an email archive and produce either a DVD or Blu-Ray disk containing all the emails from that search in a matter of minutes.
Whitelisting is a concept that dates back to the mainframe days of locked-down and controlled applications, and only allows approved and authorized applications run on user machines. While whitelisting is rapidly gaining popularity, many experts don’t expect whitelisting to replace the far more common blacklisting. Some observers are calling for “uber-whitelisting” as an alternative. We will cover this in the September issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe now.
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Leaders Roundtable
Online Banking:
Online Banking…. Catering to Your Most Desirable Members
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Technology and Marketing
CDC Software announced the general availability of Pivotal CRM 6.0, a newly-designed customer relationship management (CRM) platform based on Microsoft.NET technology. Pivotal 6.0 is highly-integrated with Microsoft Outlook (including calendaring, task and email capabilities) within the platform, allowing users to complete much of their daily work without having to leave their CRM system. CDC says that the new features of Pivotal 6.0 provide easier customization, enhanced searching and better reporting capabilities. Pivotal 6.0 also embeds SharePoint, which enables organizations to deploy SharePoint Server 2007 with SharePoint Designer 2007 and to implement a new feature in Pivotal 6.0 called SmartPortal, a Pivotal portal which allows IT professionals to set-up pre-defined portals by functional area. Evangelical Christian Credit Union is an adopter of Pivotal CRM for Financial Services.
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Online Banking/E-Commerce/Website Design
According to results from a recent SYNERGISTICS online survey, nearly one-tenth of Internet households have made a serious financial decision based on advertising or information they have gotten from some type of social media source. Social media includes blogs, podcasts, social networks, and video sharing sites. Although wider among 18- to 34-year-olds, as would be expected, response is actually quite stable among those ages 35 to 64. William H. McCracken, CEO of SYNERGISTICS, stated, "social media channels enjoy heavy traffic and have a large reach, making the potential impact of these new channels significant. Already, about one-tenth of Internet households have made a financial decision as a result of information gleaned from one of these types of sites. With direct mail experiencing declining response rates and the implementation of the ‘do not call’ list, these new channels represent new consumer contact points for financial institutions."
SentryBay has launched PhishLock which the firm says is a real-time solution which protects users of an organization's website from phishing attacks. The software operates on the end user client, or in the cloud. SentryBay claims that PhishLock immediately alerts an organization of a phishing attack so steps can be taken to shut it down. This happens automatically when the first user loads a phishing website - without the need for anyone to report or discover it.
Americans carry approximately $961.8 billion in revolving debt, according to the Federal Reserve Board. Delinquency rates on credit cards are at the highest levels since the end of 2002. In response, nearly 70 percent of financial institutions say they have cut back on credit card solicitations and 6 of 10 say they are limiting the amount of credit offered to consumers, according to Javelin Research.
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Internet Access
NetScout's nGenius Performance Manager and nGenius K2 add-on application monitor anything related to voice quality - jitter, latency, etc. NetScout technology can not only monitor voice, but it can be used to spot applications' bandwidth consumption and to track network usage during security events. The nGenius K2 application helps detect network problems and provides an early warning system. K2 is installed on the same server as nGenius Performance Manager and uses information collected by probes throughout the environment.
Objectworld Communications, a provider of unified communications solutions for small- and medium-sized businesses with Microsoft Windows platforms, announced that it is now offering unified communications for as little as 7 cents a day. per user. The unified communications features include e-mail, voicemail, messaging, and fax capabilities accessible from one interface and from any device. Voice feature support includes VoIP, personal call control, conference server, unified messaging, and integrated fax server. Other services supported include Active Directory-based administration, ODBC-enabled service creation environment, and a presence-based operator console.
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Call Centers
Telephone application platform company Ifbyphone claims that they can enable any size organization to quickly establish a virtual call center with no upfront costs. They say that their Lead Distributor solution can flexibly distribute calls to any phone, anywhere, including home offices, in a highly cost-effective manner. Once a call is received, Lead Distributor evaluates the time of day, day of week, caller-ID and number of calls previously transferred to a particular location before determining where to send the call. This Web-based tool works in conjunction with Ifbyphone local and toll free numbers, and is a completely hosted computer-integrated telephony (CIT) solution.
Can call center service and inbound sales coexist? We will cover this topic in the September issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe now.
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Conferences
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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