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July 20, 2009 - July 24, 2009
General News
* Fiserv Announces Five CU Platform Agreements
* Mortgagebot & Harland Financial Solutions Expand Alliance
* Southwest Corporate FCU Offers IRD Printing Solutions Through Rosetta Technologies
* iPay Partners with MY CU Services
* Credit Union 24 Announces 17 Long-term Contract Renewals
Fiserv, a leading global provider of financial services technology solutions, announced that it has signed five credit unions to new account processing contracts for its Portico, CubicsPlus and Galaxy credit union platforms. Seasons FCU in Middletown, CT, United Police FCU in Miami, FL and Ashtabula County School Employees CU in Ashtabula, OH will implement the Portico platform. Eastern New York FCU in Napanoch, NY will be moving to Galaxy, while Morris Sheppard Texarkana FCU in Texarkana, TX plans to implement the CubicsPlus system.
Mortgagebot announced the expansion of its preferred referral alliance with Harland Financial Solutions, an industry leading supplier of software and services to credit unions of all sizes. The expanded agreement enables Harland Financial Solutions to offer its clients the complete, multi-channel Mortgagebot PowerSite point-of-sale (POS) platform.
Rosetta Technologies, a leading provider of MICR printers and IRD and check printing software solutions, announced that Southwest Corporate Federal Credit Union has chosen Rosetta Technologies to offer its IRD Express Pack to credit unions using Southwest Corporate's deposit return solution. The IRD Express Pack is an off-the-shelf solution including MICR IRD printer, software, and consumables.
iPay Technologies, a leading independent online bill pay provider for credit unions, announced that it has partnered with MY CU Services, a subsidiary of Mid-Atlantic Corporate Federal Credit Union, to provide its bill payment product to all of the credit unions that use MY CU bill payment services. iPay currently provides bill payment services to over 2,800 financial institutions.
Credit Union 24, the country’s largest credit union-owned ATM and point-of-sale (POS) network, announced that 17 credit unions have renewed contracts with the network during Q2 2009, representing more than $3.4 billion in assets with more than 360,000 members. A total of 29 credit unions have renewed to date in 2009, with 21 new credit unions joining the network during that same time period.
Hardware News
According to Information Technology Intelligence, IBM's Power servers topped a list of most reliable x86 and Unix machines. IBM's Power servers with the AIX Unix operating system suffered an average of 15 minutes of unplanned downtime per year in their most recent survey. The worst performers were open source Linux distributions such as Debian, with more than four hours unplanned downtime per year. The next-worst were Windows Server 2003 on Intel-based hardware (three hours of downtime) and Windows Server 2008 (nearly two and a half hours downtime). But Windows Server systems also posted the biggest improvement, with a 35% reduction in downtime since 2008.
IronKey has developed an ultrasecure, hardened USB thumb drive that self-destructs when its tamper-resistant controls are disturbed. The new S200 device, which also uses hardware-based AES 256-bit strong encryption and includes anti-malware scanning and security management features, meets the government's highest FIPS 140-2 Level 3 security specifications for storing top secret data. The S200, which comes in sizes from 1 gigabyte up to 16 gigabytes of storage, is priced from $79 to $299.
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Software Updates
Baltsoft Software announced Encrypt Easy 3.3 which lets you encrypt and decrypt files, folders, and entire directory trees for storage on unsecured drives or for emailing. Right click a file or folder to be encrypted, and with a single mouse click and a password, the program locks your files. One mouse click and the password are all that are required by the person decrypting the files, who need not have Encrypt Easy installed. Encrypt Easy shreds files permanently and also has a wipe utility to remove Internet and system activities. It runs on Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista, costs $29 for a single-user license, and site and corporate licenses are available.
A new software-as-a-service e-mail archiving product, RestorEmail offers "real-time retrieval access for vital e-mail data to ensure business continuity [and] regulatory compliance and protection against catastrophic loss of e-mail data in the event of a disaster." There are two versions, a Business Continuity Edition that starts at $1 per user per month, and the E-mail Archiving Edition, which provides indefinite storage and retrieval for $4.50 per user per month.
Every IT professional has a short list of favorite tools and we will list some favorites from a dozen pros in the August issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe now.
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ATMs/Kiosks
A British company called Applied DNA Sciences is touting the effectiveness of their SigNature DNA markers in protecting cash in transit to ATMs and branches. Their system links criminals to stained notes, clothing, mobile phones, automotive parts and any other items that come into direct contact with the perpetrator. The company claims that since SigNature DNA is extraordinarily persistent, even the most sophisticated criminal will not be able to detect or remove it.
A South African bank has outfitted its ATMs with pepper spray in an attempt to foil attacks. Absa Bank, one of South Africa’s largest, has installed the spray on 11 machines where attacks and skimmer installations have been prevalent. If a camera on the machine detects someone tampering with the card slot in an attempt to install a skimming device or explosives, a mechanism installed at the ATM releases a blast of pepper spray. Unfortunately system has some issues: One of the machines recently sprayed three maintenance workers.
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Biometric Digest Highlights - WWW.BIODIGEST.COM
BrickHouse Security says that their USB Fingerprint lock is taking the standard biometric door lock to a whole new level. This electronic lock has a USB port that you can use to export an access report to a USB flash drive. It will tell you who has been entering and exiting, and when, and they say that it is perfect for smaller organizations.
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Wireless World
According to an ABI Research forecast, nearly three times as many consumers globally will use their mobile phones to make domestic person to person payments than those who will use their mobile phones to conduct traditional banking functions by the end of 2011. The research firm predicts that 170 million mobile subscribers will make domestic P2P payments in 2011. While their report notes that the developing world is embracing mobile domestic person to person payments with enthusiasm, the growth of mobile financial services in the developing world is sometimes hindered by regulatory barriers.
Trend Micro has analyzed a piece of mobile malware that they say signals the arrival of mobile botnets. It is significant because it is the first known malware sample that spreads by SMS (Short Message Service). It is capable of downloading new SMS templates from a remote server in order to send out new SMS messages in attempt to spread itself by having other people click on links. Plus, it can extract subscriber and network information from the device and send it to a remote server.
One security expert is convinced that some of the most severe malware infections start from mobile devices, and he is calling for encryption on all of these endpoints which can include smart phones such as the iPhone or BlackBerry, and also thumb drives and other USB-connected devices. We will cover some encryption options in the August issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe now.
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Security Section
Javelin Strategy & Research issued a new report that reveals consumers are willing to share security responsibility to fight fraud. The report, "Understanding Consumer Willingness to Fight Fraud," also dispels the belief that credit unions’ zero-liability fraud protection is causing consumers to lose interest in protecting themselves from fraud. The Javelin report found that consumers are not only willing to be involved in security, but also are actually eager to partner with credit unions to protect themselves from fraudulent transactions. Key findings of the report include:
• More than half of all fraud is discovered by fraud victims.
• Consumer monitoring of accounts is the number one way identity fraud is detected.
• With many consumers now receiving electronic alerts, technology plays a major role in detecting fraud.
• Methods for sharing account security preferred by consumers include better authentication, alerts, Extended Verification SSL, and discounted security software.
Trend Micro announced antimalware software specifically designed for Windows-based protection in virtual machine environments based on VMware's ESX, ESXi and vSphere. Trend Micro Core Protection for VMware makes use of VMware's VMsafe application programming interfaces to scan VMs as well as integrate with VMware's management console, vCenter. The Core Protection for VMware is based on Trend's existing antimalware but is designed as a "lightweight agent" to do real-time scans on VMware VMs. Later this year Trend Micro expects to introduce a VMware-based security product for intrusion detection and prevention.
E-mail is perhaps the most sensitive information application in a credit union's software suite. Of course, strong e-mail security is a must and we will discuss some options for protecting against e-mail-borne threats in the August issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe now.
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Leaders Roundtable
Online & Mobile Banking:
Saving Costs & Increasing Marketshare
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Technology and Marketing
A recent report from Independent IT Analyst reveals that more than 40% of CRM buyers would not make a purchase from the same vendor again. The research firm concludes that the purchasers of customer relationship management software have not been able to obtain impartial data to assist them in the vendor selection process - they say that product demonstrations often highlight the product's strengths while masking weaknesses and that customer references also cannot be relied on always since they might have received some form of compensation from the vendor.
Sikorsky Financial Credit Union is targeting teenagers with a new savings account. To encourage young people to begin a savings program, the Stratford, CT-based credit union is rolling out their "Early Advantage" account that pays 5% interest on the first $500 deposited. Meanwhile, deposits over $500 will be paid interest at the prevailing market rate.
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Online Banking/E-Commerce/Website Design
Fiserv announced that more than two million U.S. households adopted online banking and bill payment during the last year, according to a recent consumer survey. A total of 69.7 million households, representing four out of five households with Internet access, now use online banking services, primarily to access balance and account history and transfer money between accounts. After those two features, 58% of online-banking users said they view imaged checks, 57% get statements, 47% pay bills, 33% use online customer service, 30% use search functions, 28% get activity alerts, 21% download transactions, and 18% transfer money to or from accounts held at a different financial institution.
UW Credit Union announced the addition of a new tool called “Debt in Focus” to uwcu.org. Debt in Focus is a free, anonymous web-based debt education tool to help consumers with budgeting and personal finances. The Madison, WI-based credit union is among the first group of credit unions to pilot Debt in Focus, which will eventually be made available to credit unions across the nation.
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Internet Access
Nortel has released their CS 1000 R6.0 unified communications (UC) solution which they say provides much better simplicity, resiliency, security, and openness. CS 1000 R6.0 is Linux-based and permits customers to select any brand and combination of hardware devices such as the IBM x3350 and Dell R300. CS 1000 R6.0’s improved SIP features allow the addition of any number of most third party low cost or free SIP phones as well as Nortel’s own IP Softphone 3456. Nortel claims that the new solution offers more than 750 telephony features including unified messaging, customer contact center, interactive voice response, wireless VoIP and SIP, at very competitive costs.
In a related story, Siemens is also touting their UC solution as small business friendly. Their OpenScape Office UC application scales so that organizations of up to 384 users can access voice and conferencing services, presence, mobility, voicemail, messaging, and contact center capabilities. They note that because OpenScape Office now operates on Siemens’ HiPath 3000 platform, UC can be deployed through a simple software upgrade across not only IP but also TDM, and analog environments. This gives Siemens’ customers more flexibility in migrating to UC and means smaller organizations can upgrade to UC even if they do not have VoIP environments.
AT&T says it has successfully demonstrated the ability to recover from a major backbone outage by routing 40G of traffic using mobile trailers equipped with gigabit-speed routers. The scenario AT&T tested is how it would recover if one of its main switching centers were put out of service for days or weeks as in the case of a hurricane or fire. Now AT&T says it can use trailers with gigabit-speed routers to support the backbone traffic until the center is repaired. AT&T says that their ability to quickly recover from a backbone outage is an important feature for its business customers.
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Call Centers
Accurately scheduling agents based on call volume is one of the biggest call center management headaches. That is why many centers are scraping spreadsheets for scheduling agents and turning to workforce management (WFM) solutions. Today’s WFM solutions, which are increasingly being offered on a hosted basis, typically include analytics capabilities which enable managers to forecast, with a surprising degree of accuracy, how many agents will be needed for any particular shift. Using historical call data and ACD integration, the WFM system can determine, based on past call volume and other factors such as time of day, day of the week and time of year, about how many incoming calls a manager might expect. Additionally, these systems can forecast volume for other types of contact options such as Web chat and email.
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Conferences
Catch Tom and Bill Rogers, Associate Editor of Credit Union tech-talk at the following conferences in 2009:
October 4-7, Las Vegas - Firefighters' National Credit Union Summit
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