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Credit Union tech-talk News
January 26, 2009 - January 30, 2009
General News
* uMonitor and BANKDetect Form Partnership
* MVi Garners Winners Circle Award
* USAlliance FCU Selects Open Solutions
* CU*Answers Announces $400,000 Patronage Dividend
* REALTORS FCU Selects L9.com
uMonitor, a financial solution services provider for member acquisition and deposit growth, and BANKDetect, a knowledge-based technology company that focuses on loss prevention and compliance for credit unions, announced a partnership to integrate their services for credit union clients. BANKDetect will incorporate ID verification (name, address, phone, zip, SSN, etc.) including “red flags” compliance (indicators of possible risk of identity theft) with uOpen & uFund, uMonitor’s online account opening and funding solutions.
Millennial Vision, Inc. (MVi), a Salt Lake City, Utah-based document imaging reseller of Laserfiche software, received a Winners Circle Award presented in recognition of their sales achievements during 2008. MVi received the award at a reception honoring all Winners Circle VARs for outstanding achievement during Laserfiche's annual VAR and Users Conference. MVi announced a 13.5 percent growth in sales over 2007.
Open Solutions, a leading provider of integrated, enterprise-wide data processing technologies for credit unions throughout the United States, Canada and other international markets, announced USAlliance Federal Credit Union has selected The Complete Credit Union Solution: DNA, an enhanced relational core processing platform, to modernize the credit union’s IT operations. In addition to The Complete Credit Union Solution, USAlliance will also implement Open Solutions’ ReportWizard, Digital Document Solutions, Maxxar Telephony Solutions, eCB, Financial Accounting Suite and the Workload Automation Suite provided by alliance partner UC4.
CU*Answers, a West Michigan-based Credit Union Service Organization has announced the return of $400,000 in Patronage Dividends to its credit union owners for 2008. According to CU*Answers, this patronage dividend return represents an increase of 100% over 2007’s Patronage Dividend of $200,000. CU*Answers said it has returned a total of $1,250,000 in patronage dividends for the previous 5 year period.
L9.com has been selected to partner with REALTORS Federal Credit Union (RFCU) to develop and maintain their new website. Delivering customized services to Realtors in all 50 states, with a potential membership exceeding one million members, RFCU will be a totally virtual entity with no physical branches. The new RFCU site will be built upon L9.com’s CUsite Content Management System.
Hardware News
Nortel has introduced the new Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch (ERS) 5600 family which includes five switches. Nortel says that their ERS 5600 is not only suitable for deployment in the data center, but the switches can also be used in the edge, distribution and core layers of the network. The company claims that the five switches offer up to 18 times the stacking performance, up to twice the capacity, and up to seven-times the “resiliency” of the stackable switches offered by competitors.
Cisco Systems is gearing up to sell a new, possibly disruptive server in the next few months, according to the New York Times. The report says that the server would come bundled with networking software from Cisco and VMware virtualization software. This strategy fits with the company's goal is to virtualize the whole data center - the server is just the first in a series of products to achieve that.
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Software Updates
Citrix is teaming up with Intel to optimize its XenDesktop software for desktops and laptops based on Intel Core2 and Centrino 2 processors. Citrix's virtual-machine hypervisors offer the management benefits of centralizing content, enforcing access control to desktop images, updating and patching desktops and supporting multiple virtual machines on a single device while keeping them isolated from each other. Security settings can be altered - patches applied, security settings updated - once on a server, then deployed or synched to remote machines. The virtual desktop model employing a hypervisor differs from the model where the laptop or desktop has a thin client that receives images of the desktop from a server shared by other virtual desktops. Because machines with their own client hypervisors have dedicated computing power, they can deliver better application performance and graphics, Citrix claims.
Continuous data protection (CDP) packages store every data change to lessen full backup frequencies and allow for much faster restores from any point in time. One vendor says that their solution can recover a corrupted application so quickly that it is typically up and running within 30 seconds. We will cover it in the February issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe now.
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Software Section Sponsored by
Raddon Financial Group (RFG)
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ATMs/Kiosks
Wincor Nixdorf says that they are the first ATM manufacturer to take loose, mixed bundles of cash and checks and automatically sort and credit them. The ProCash 3100 comes with an optional add-on recycler, which obviates the need for cash deliveries, while the newer ProCash 4000 series has this refill capability built-in.
Multi-Tech Systems and Symstream Americas announced the release of their SocketModem SS embedded cellular wireless modem. The firms say that the SocketModem SS offers greater flexibility and connectivity for ATMs and kiosks because it provides connectivity throughout the carrier's larger GSM (voice) wireless network as distinct from their packet data network. The SocketModem SS, when connected to the Symstream network, also provides access to the Symstream Souran management system which supports remote operations and a high level of performance monitoring.
ATM marketing has not caught on very well in the United States, but in Greece it is quite popular. One Athens-based institution - Pireaus Bank - is reporting that they have received an extraordinary 35 percent response rate to its ATM offers. Their average response rate from direct mail was just one percent to three percent, and the excellent response to personalized marketing offers on ATM screens has prompted them to expand the program to other countries in which it operates.
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Biometric Digest Highlights - WWW.BIODIGEST.COM
Start-up Delfigo has incorporated keyboard biometrics into its multifactor authorization product. Artificial intelligence technology developed by MIT forms the basis for Delfigo's solution which is dubbed DSGateway. In a nutshell, here is how it works:
1. User signs on normally with user ID and password.
b. User keyboard biometrics and geospatial data determine if the typing pattern matches a historical profile.
c. System assigns a confidence factor (CF).
d. If CF is weak, access is restricted and the user may elect to increase confidence using in-band and out-of-band methods.
e. If the CF is high enough, user is granted access.
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Wireless World
PayPal is making a big push to deliver mobile payment services via smart phones, which are now capable of supporting easy-to-use payments applications. Some analysts believe that a PayPal smart phone service would offer stiff competition to credit cards. A PayPal spokesperson said that smart phones "are going to be the beachhead of mobile payments because this is all about consumer convenience, and only the smart phone provides the quality of user interface which you need for having a good, convenient interaction."
PSCU Financial Services says that they are the nation’s first CUSO to offer a mobile banking solution for credit unions. They currently offer access to balances, transaction history and other information for checking and savings accounts from mobile devices. It also enables users to conduct intrabank fund transfers, and PSCU plans to add access to credit card, bill payment and prepaid card accounts shortly. mBanking delivers both Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and Applet formats - credit unions can select one format or deploy both.
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Security Section
According to Websense, 77 percent of websites that carry malicious code are legitimate sites that have been compromised. The number of sites carrying malicious code grew by 46 percent over the course of 2008, according to their "State of Internet Security" report. Seventy percent of the top 100 sites on the Web -- most of them social networking or search engine sites -- either hosted malicious content or contained a masked redirect to lure unsuspecting victims from legitimate sites to malicious sites.
Malware coders seem to be ahead of the curve at all times, so IT departments must remain diligent. There is one Anti-Malware scanner that does a good job of keeping malware off computers, and comes in a free version. We will tell you about it in the February issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe now.
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Leaders Roundtable
Security:
Protecting Member Data at Rest and in Motion
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Technology and Marketing
Sage North America announced SageCRM v6.2, a CRM system aimed primarily at small- and medium-sized businesses. The updated 6.2 version includes new pre-configured and customizable screen themes, an editor capable of handling multilingual e-mail campaigns and an enhanced graphical view. The product is available as a standalone CRM system, and as part of the Sage Accpac Extended Enterprise Suite.
Akron, OH-based Towpath Credit Union is running a unique marketing campaign that is encouraging their members to bring in their loose change by offering to pay them an extra 10% of the total they bring in. The credit union is one of six financial institutions participating in the Akron Roll Your Change Week, which encourages people to bring in their change and deposit it into savings accounts. Coin counting machines will handle the deposits and the member that brings in the most change will win a $100, three-month CD.
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Online Banking/E-Commerce/Website Design
According to research from Celent, early adopters of RDC (remote deposit capture) have found that consumer capture, contrary to popular belief, has exception rates that are similar to branch deposits. These rates are both modest and manageable, plus duplicate checks tend to be caught and corrected early, prior to posting. Importantly, there has been little evidence of fraud unique to this channel, which can be at least partially accredited to close monitoring of velocity and deposit totals, and the setting of daily and monthly transaction limits.
In a related story, EFT Network Inc. has come out with a RDC solution that allows either businesses or consumers to deposit checks by faxing them to EFT Network’s data center. EFT Network’s product, called FAXTellerPLUS, permits a user to place up to three checks in the pockets of a frosted plastic “carrier,” which bears a unique identifier that ties the checks to the consumer or small business.
Security giant Symantec believes that credit unions are putting their members at risk by using standard security questions, such as mother's maiden name, to confirm identities online or over the phone. The firm says credit unions must start asking questions that only the member can answer and that don't appear on social networking sites. Symantec points to online Census information as an example of the wealth of personal information now available on the Internet that can be used by criminals to find answers to potential security questions.
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Internet Access
While it seems that having a computerized auto-attendant to greet callers would result in high abandonment rates, many businesses have reported that automated screening, routing, and fast transitions to the right professional have actually increased caller satisfaction. Business VoIP provider Nextiva offers smaller organizations essential business VoIP features, such as voicemail, flexible call forwarding and find me/follow me. Their auto-attendant supports for up to 100 extensions, and includes:
-- Day and Night Mode Schedule
-- Dial by Name Directory
-- Virtual Departments
-- Multiple Auto Attendants
-- Import your Greeting
-- Music on Hold
-- Hunt Groups
CallFire has announced a new webinar series, entitled “Do-It-Yourself Debt Collection”. The aim of the free two-part webinar series will be to educate small-to-medium size organizations on how to save money using CallFire to send monthly automated debt collection telephone calls to delinquent accounts. The company says that a single voice broadcast can cost as little as 2 cents per delinquency reminder. They also offer their Virtual Call Center technology to dwindle down accounts receivable by automating the consumer-outreach process that permits overdue payments to be taken over the phone.
Verizon is readying a new product that will marry its wireless phone service with an Internet phone that uses a broadband network to make calls. The new phone system, called Verizon Hub, connects to any broadband line to provide home phone service using the Internet. It integrates with Verizon Wireless service so that customers can send and receive SMS text messages directly from their home phone and use location-based services, like Chaperone and VZ Navigator. It also provides additional Web-based services, such as an online calendar and a contact list that syncs with Microsoft Outlook.
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Call Centers
Five9 has announced the release of its latest Virtual Call Center Suite, version 7.1. The release features an all new Workforce Management solution, along with new reason codes, supervisor whisper coaching and barge-in, and improved intraday reporting. Five9 has been a leader in delivering call center software on demand since 2001, and says that many small organizations prefer their services over continuing to invest in capital expenditures for on-premise software and hardware.
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Conferences
Catch Tom and Bill Rogers, Associate Editor of Credit Union tech-talk at the following conferences in 2008:
April 6-8, Park City - 2009 MVi Users Conference
June 4-5, Lake Las Vegas - Credit Union InfoSecurity Conference
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