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Credit Union tech-talk News
June 1, 2009 - June 5, 2009
General News
* Jack Henry Teams with Pitney Bowes to Offer RDC Solution
* Horizon Utah FCU to Upgrade to CU*Answers Platform
* PSECU Partners with Trusteer
* RFG Examines New Realities for CUs at Annual CEO Forum
* Bradford-Scott Adds New Core Processing Client
Jack Henry & Associates, a leading provider of integrated technology solutions and data processing services for credit unions, announced a joint program between its ProfitStars division and Pitney Bowes that will facilitate the sale, installation, and support of ProfitStars’ Remote Deposit Capture solution called Click Deposit. The two vendors say that their turnkey approach will help credit unions increase deposits and deploy remote deposit capture to members without sales, installation, hardware, or support costs.
Horizon Utah Federal Credit Union has announced its intention to upgrade to the CU*Answers core processing platform, CU*BASE, in November, 2009. Horizon Utah Federal Credit Union is a full-service credit union with 5 branches located in the Davis County area. This well established credit union, which has almost 14,000 members and total assets approaching $100 million, will be taking advantage of the CU*BASE Inhouse processing solution.
Pennsylvania State Employees Credit Union (PSECU), one of the nation’s largest credit unions, and Trusteer, a customer protection company for online businesses, announced that the Trusteer Rapport product is now being offered as a free download to PSECU’s more than 350,000 members as an additional layer of protection for online banking sessions. Rapport silently protects personal information entered by users in their Web browser, including usernames, passwords, account numbers, etc., from malicious software that may be hiding on the machine and redirection to look alike websites.
Raddon Financial Group (RFG), a provider of research-based solutions to credit unions and a strategic business unit of Open Solutions, is hosting its annual CEO Forum for chief executives and directors of credit unions with assets in excess of $500 million. The conference, slated for Aug. 12-14 at The Broadmoor resort in Colorado Springs, CO, will feature a CEO panel discussion among leading credit union CEOs and credit union veteran Dennis Dollar, the former NCUA chair and principal of Dollar Associates.
Bradford-Scott Data, currently supporting more than 160 credit unions in 15 states, announced that it has been selected by Planites Credit Union to replace their current core solution. Planites Credit Union, located in Chicago, said that it chose the Sharetec system because it offers them more functionality and less expense.
Hardware News
Solid state disks (SSDs) are now appearing within every vendor's equipment portfolio. An SSD's capital cost (or price per GB) is currently holding it back from replacing hard disk drives (HDDs). At a recent storage conference one expert said: "The price per GB cross-over point could be 2013 but the IOPS [input-output per second] cross-over is now." Meanwhile HDD spin speeds and capacities are hitting a wall. The highest performance HDDs have stayed at 15,000 rpm for some time; at 20,000 rpm, the outer edge is travelling faster than the speed of sound.
Asustek Computer joined other NAS (network attached storage) device makers such as QNAP and Acer by showing off a new NAS that uses Intel's low-power, inexpensive Atom N270 microprocessor. The device provides data storage and backup for small businesses and contains two 7200 rpm SATA hard disk drives offering a total of 1TB of storage. The storage device is designed for continuous operation, carries an uninterrupted power supply (UPS), and can act as a communication hub for wireless devices connected to a wired local network.
Next generation firewalls are coming down in price and gaining more and more functionality. We will cover one new model in the July issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe today.
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Software Updates
Windows 7 may be looking faster and more polished than its predecessor, Windows Vista, but experts say both operating systems are nearly identical under the hood. Unfortunately, that means some of the application compatibility problems that plagued Vista users could also strike Windows 7 users. One solution is to run balky applications in virtualization, such as Windows 7's XP Mode or, for large enterprises, MED-V. Another option is to use small pieces of code called shims that can trick applications into running properly. Microsoft is providing thousands of shims for various applications, and for IT pros who need to create shims for their custom apps, Microsoft offers its free Windows Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT). The toolkit helps IT pros diagnose app compatibility problems then apply the proper shims to get the older software running.
There are a few expensive commercial partitioning programs that will repartition Windows servers. However, for those on a budget, there is also an open-source alternative: Gnome Partition Editor (GParted), which can be downloaded for free from SourceForge.net. You can use it for such tasks as creating, resizing, copying, and deleting partitions, and it works well with RAID and NTFS partitions.
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ATMs/Kiosks
Triton announced that its parent company, Dover, and Nautilus Hyosung have terminated an acquisition agreement for Triton. It appears that the $64M deal was nixed by challenges that were coming from the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the anti-trust review process. Triton said it is going to continue to move ahead as a stand-alone ATM manufacturer.
NCR is touting their 2ST technology as a green addition to their SelfServ ATMs. 2ST is patented NCR technology that enables ATM deployers to print on both sides of a thermal paper receipt, reducing paper consumption by as much as 45 percent. The combined dual-roll, two-sided thermal printing modules include auto-change functionality to reduce paper waste and maintenance costs through fewer replenishment visits. In addition to 2ST printing, NCR SelfServ ATMs are equipped with other environmentally responsible features, including new energy-saving options such as LED lighting and a 25-percent reduction in the physical cabling over previous-generation ATMs to reduce power waste.
Premier Members Federal Credit Union is getting on the imaging bandwagon in a big way with the rollout of Diebold’s ImageWay portfolio, which includes all capture points including the ATM, the branch and remote business locations. The Boulder, CO-based credit union updated its ATM network with 12 new Opteva ATMs with Intelligent Depository Modules. The modules integrate with ImageWay ATM, Diebold’s Web-based image processing system, to determine check amounts, assess image quality and transfer deposit images and transaction data back to the credit union’s central processing site.
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Biometric Digest Highlights - WWW.BIODIGEST.COM
In an effort to reduce labor costs and increase security, Augusta Metro Federal Credit Union has implemented Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies’ standalone Schlage biometric HandKey reader to provide its members with self-service access to the safe deposit vault. The Augusta, GA-based credit union's members will use a biometric hand geometry reader simultaneously analyzes more than 31,000 points and records more than 90 separate measurements of an individual's hand, including length, width, thickness and surface area, to verify the person’s identification. Once a match is made, a bullet-proof glass door lets them in and the member’s safe deposit box opens and nobody can enter the vault until that member puts away their deposit box.
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Wireless World
New research from TowerGroup finds that 2009 will be a pivotal year for mobile banking as it turns from a niche channel to a mainstream channel. Despite the general downturn in the banking industry, TowerGroup estimates that mobile banking usage will grow from 10 million active users in 2009 to over 53 million active users in 2013, representing a compound annual growth rate of 52%. Driving forces include economic concerns that are prompting consumers to manage their finances more closely and the proliferation of mobile devices and smart phones. These trends lead the TowerGroup to believe that mobility will be a major disruptive force in the financial services industry.
Meanwhile Gartner is predicting a surge in mobile payments this year. The number of people around the world making payments using their mobile phones is set to soar from 43.1 million in 2008 to 73.4 million this year, a 70% rise, according to the analyst house. By 2012, the company predicts the number of people making m-payments will hit 190 million - more than three per cent of total mobile users - as it becomes "mainstream."
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Security Section
According to McAfee’s recently released report "The Web’s Most Dangerous Search Terms," the most dangerous keyword to search for using public search engines these days is "screensavers." Upon searching for 2,658 unique popular keywords and phrases across 413,368 unique URLs, McAfee’s research concludes that lyrics and anything that includes ‘free” has the highest risk percentage of exposing users to malware and fraudulent websites. On the other hand, their research states that the category with the safest risk profile is health-related search terms.
New research from the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) has found that most phishers are setting up shop on legitimate websites to be inconspicuous in their attempts to pilfer valuable information from consumers. Among 30,454 phishing domains, only 5,991 domain names (18.5%) were registered by phishers. "Phishing most often takes place on compromised Web servers, where the phishers place their phishing pages unbeknownst to the site operators,"" says APWG. They add that "this method gains the phishers free hosting, and complicates take-down efforts because suspending a domain name or hosting account also disables the resolution of the legitimate user's site. Phishing on a compromised website typically takes place on a subdomain or in a subdirectory, where the phish is not easily noticed by the site's operator or visitors."
Some security experts believe that deliberate insider threats fall into three main areas. We will cover them in the July 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
S1 Enterprise has released the results on their latest survey entitled "Banking Relationships: An Era of Change." Historically, consumers have selected ‘Convenience’ as their top reason for choosing a financial institution. The new survey found that for U.S. consumers, this perennial ‘number one’ has been pushed to third place behind ‘Financial Stability’ (65 percent) and ‘Trust’ (54 percent) and only a few percentage points higher than ‘Customer Focused’ (47 percent). The researchers concluded that "this data underscores the need for financial institutions to draw closer to their customers in terms of communicating the institution’s financial health as well as demonstrating an understanding of customer needs and expectations."
In an effort to educate members and their children about managing money, Addison Avenue Federal Credit Union has rolled out what it calls a virtual Family Center. The Family Center covers many topics including how to read credit reports, find the right checking and savings accounts, how to use credit cards wisely, and tips to help young people keep their finances on the right track.
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Online Banking/E-Commerce/Website Design
A multipurpose Visa card that has the capabilities of a mag stripe card, contactless payment card and secure ID card all in one device is being tested in Minneapolis. The card contains the MicroPass 4006 platform consisting of two applications: the Visa payWave application, which allows for contactless payment at the point of sale, and the HID iCLASS application, which allows for contactless access to secure facilities.
According to the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, the Federal Reserve Banks should adapt the automated clearing house network to compete directly with private-sector networks for debit card processing. Thomas Hoenig emphasized that he isn’t proposing the Fed issue cards or run its own card network, but he said the U.S. national banking regulator could “add enhancements” to the ACH that would allow the nearly ubiquitous network “to become an alternative to running transactions over card networks.” The idea of expanding the ACH into the market for debit card transactions is sure to meet stiff resistance, but some observers believe that the ACH network represents the most efficient debit network option available today.
To maintain our stock of hard currency, the US Treasury creates billions of dollars worth of new bills and coins each year. Electronic payments advocates are quick to point out that this costs the American taxpayers a pretty penny: in 2008 alone it was $848 million. While most of these e-payment proponents admit that there will never be such a thing as a "cash-less" society, they argue that there a myriad more reasons for minimizing the use of cash. We will explore these reasons in the July issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe today.
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Internet Access
Verizon Business is rolling out new service packages, dubbed ‘Bizpacks’, that bring together the company’s wired and wireless voice and data capabilities with security and data management. The VoIP Bizpack puts together Voice over Internet Protocol solutions such as dedicated access, toll free and email management services with the company’s hardware offerings. This Bizpack is also offered with the Verizon IP Integrated Access, a site-based solution for medium sized customers for meeting their voice and data requirements through a single system while persisting with their existing phone system. For those customers who want low maintenance costs and capital outlay, and those who require an IP-based PBX system, Verizon offers a Hosted IP Centrex which is a total turnkey solution.
The most popular FTP replacement on the Web, YouSendIt, has been around since 2004 and has 8.5 million unique registered users. Individuals can use the service for free by providing their name and e-mail address, the e-mail address of the file recipient, and then uploading the file. The recipient gets an e-mail from YouSendIt with a unique download link for the file. Paid services include files larger than 100MB, password protected download links, certified delivery with tracking, and return receipts. Their Pro service is $9.99 per month, and their Business Plus service is $29.99 per month. You can also pay per use for features such as the certified delivery and tracking.
Silver Peak Systems announced that 66 Federal Credit Union has implemented the company’s NX appliances for Wide Area Network acceleration. The Bartlesville, OK-based credit union can now optimize every application that runs over IP, and back up data faster and more reliably from its Symitar Episys core processing platform over the new Silver Peak-enabled WAN.
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Call Centers
Motivating long-time call center agents can be a difficult task for supervisors. Some call center managers suggest that one way to give your veterans a boost is to institute a mentor program. Having your new agents partner with someone who's been there and can empathize as well as guide them through the initiation process can be a good way to show an experienced agent that their experience and knowledge is valuable. Some programs that use mentors say that they go a long way to motivating agents - both the new one and the long time one. Also some programs strive to recognize mentors throughout their organization, not just in the call center which adds to the desire of employees to take part in the mentor program.
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Conferences
Catch Tom and Bill Rogers, Associate Editor of Credit Union tech-talk at the following conferences in 2008:
June 4-5, Lake Las Vegas - Credit Union InfoSecurity Conference
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