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Credit Union tech-talk News
March 16, 2009 - March 20, 2009
General News
* uMonitor Wins CUNA Technology Council's Best of Show Award
* Enhanced Software Products & eDominate Form Partnership
* Jack Henry Supports Virtualization
* CU*Answers Announces New Savings Tool
* Passageways Adds New Customers
The uSwitch online switch kit from uMonitor was the winner of the CUNA Technology Council's Best of Show Award at CUNA's 2009 Governmental Affairs Conference. uSwitch allows members to transfer all their financial relationships to a different financial institution quickly and easily. Members can switch any direct deposit transactions, transfer any payments that are automatically deducted from their accounts, switch loan accounts or credit cards, and close other financial accounts.
Enhanced Software Products (ESP) and eDominate announced a partnership that will deliver the next generation of software to credit unions, to help meet the demands of the next generation of members. This relationship will enable ESP’s credit unions to improve efficiencies and services, with an end-to-end solution: from the online member services of eCommerce Manager to the efficiencies of LOS Plus to boarding to ESP’s core processing system, FORZA³.
Jack Henry & Associates, a leading provider of integrated technology solutions and data processing services for credit unions, formally announced its commitment to support its growing number of client/server-based complementary products with server virtualization. This announcement follows months of research and continued success with product and technology testing. Jack Henry & Associates is certifying its complementary products and is currently supporting VMware ESX solutions with plans to support Microsoft’s Hyper-V solutions in the future.
CU*Answers, a West Michigan-based CUSO that provides data processing solutions to credit unions, announced a new savings tool: Donate Your Dividends. The feature allows members to donate a portion (or all) of their share product dividends to a charity via a new dividend repayment code. Members can select what percentage of their dividend they want to donate, and the credit union can set up multiple charities from which the member can chose.
Passageways, an Indiana based portal solutions provider for credit unions, has signed several new portal customers this year. Besides new clients, The recently signed customers from this year include: 1. Hudson Valley FCU, NY (Employee and Board Portal); 2. Sunwest FCU, AZ (Employee Portal); 3. Penn State CU, PA (Employee Portal); 4. Telcom CU, MI (Employee Portal); 5. Global CU, WA - (Board Portal); and 6. Mazuma CU, MO (Board Portal).
Hardware News
Canon announced the availability of the imageFORMULA CR-180II Check Transport device, the successor to the Canon CR-180. The Canon CR-180II features duplex scanning speeds of up to 180 checks per minute, a high-capacity 200-document auto feeder, and two output pockets. Using Infrared Double-Feed Detection, the CR-180II handles a wide variety of document types, including payment or deposit slips, carrier envelopes, as well as document batches of mixed dimensions and thicknesses. It has an output resolution of up to 240 dots-per-inch (dpi), including a new 120 dpi grayscale mode.
SATA Revision 3 or SATA 6Gbps is the next big step in the Serial ATA specification. The read speeds are about 550 megabytes per second (including command overhead). By comparison, SATA 1.5 achieved 120Mbps, and SATA 3 achieved 250Mbps. Seagate will have a SATA 6Gbps hard drive to market in "late 2009", and it will also feature better power management and improved native command queuing.
Tideway offers a product called Foundation which is an automated application mapping solution. It discovers all the hardware in your datacenter, from switches to servers, as well as what applications, OSes, and databases are running on them. Plus, it maps all of the dependencies among them, including which servers are using which network connections and conversing with which databases.
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Software Updates
Microsoft and Marathon Technologies are partnering to make software-based fault tolerant computing more affordable. They are now offering three levels of availability:
Level One: Microsoft Failover Clustering - High availability helps eliminate single points of failure - reducing downtime, guarding against data loss
Level Two: everRun Component-Level Fault Tolerance – For applications with requirement for little or no downtime, zero data loss
Level Three: everRun System - Level Fault Tolerance - For the most critical applications with requirement for zero downtime, zero data loss
Wikis help organizations keep all their working documents per project in a central place where everyone can get to them from anywhere, securely. One option is SamePage from eTouch Systems. SamePage provides access control features so you can allow or deny access to anything for anyone. Many organizations use the hosted model and store their documents on SamePage’s servers, but eTouch also offers on-site software for organizations to host themselves. SamePage offers their service free for up to five users and a limited number of projects and pages. Pricing for up to 20 users starts at $100 per month.
Enterprise-grade server virtualization can be expensive, especially during these difficult economic times when IT budgets are under scrutiny. Fortunately, there are plenty of low cost and even free solutions that fit right in with small business needs. We will cover them in the April 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
ADT is introducing to North American financial institutions its Anti-Skim ATM Security Solution that helps prevent skimming attempts and detects skimming devices on all major ATM makes and models. The ADT solution is installed inside an ATM near the card reader, making it invisible from the outside. The technology helps prevent card skimming attempts by interrupting the operation of the illegal card reader. The solution also detects the presence of foreign devices placed over or near an ATM card entry slot. The ADT solution can trigger a silent alarm for command center response and can coordinate video surveillance of all skimming activities, plus the firm says that it requires no software adjustments to the ATM.
Boston-based TowerGroup notes that the circulation of cash is increasing due in part to the bailouts and the need to print more U.S. currency to support them. The research firm says cash circulation in the United States has had an 8 percent compound annual growth rate since 1970. From September 2008 to December 2008, the amount of U.S. currency in circulation went from $782 billion to $812 billion. Some industry observers believe that ATM deployers will benefit as consumers lean more on cash.
Maryland-based Police Federal Credit Union is rolling out two CO-OP Fast Branch kiosks that allow their members to make check and cash deposits without envelopes or deposit slips, make cash or check withdrawals, make loan payments by cash and check, or get loan advances in cash or check. The credit union says that the new kiosks are the first in the nation to be located inside a police station.
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Biometric Digest Highlights - WWW.BIODIGEST.COM
Voice biometric proponents believe that call centers must get away from their current cold, bureaucratic inquisition. “What is your account number? What is your social security number? Date of birth? Mother’s maiden name? They are convinced that voice verification can prevent this and save money. Learn more about voice biometrics in the April issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe today.
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Wireless World
Fidelity National Information Services is live with their three pronged approach to mobile banking. FIS says that they are currently the only provider of a hosted, ASP triple play product that is in production - meaning that FIS can go live with a member on all three levels of mobile banking today. The Triple Play product offers members the flexibility of choosing the appropriate level of service including Level 1 - SMS Text, Level 2 - Mobile Web and Level 3 – Full Downloadable Web Application. Plus they include customized support for specific platforms such as the iPhone and BlackBerry as part of their Downloadable Web Applications.
Mobile point-of-sale (POS) payments are coming closer to reality in the United States, and the technology is already common in the Japan and Singapore. ViVOTech says that they are leading the way with their e-wallet solution that is password-protected and boasts a self-authentication process to prevent access by unauthorized users. They also note that the data in transit is protected from theft by encryption and other security layers. The firm predicts that "by 2012 and 2013, things are coming so m-payments will be basically business as usual, with hundreds of millions of NFC (near field communications) phones becoming available."
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Security Section
The Intrepidus Group analyzed the results of 32 mock-phishing scenarios against 69,000 employees around the world and found that 23 percent of users fall for spear phishing. Among the other findings of Intrepidus' study: men and women are equally susceptible to phishing attacks. Also, 60 percent of corporate employees who were susceptible to targeted spear phishing responded to the phishing emails within three hours on average, and phishing attacks are 40 percent more successful when they use an "authoritative tone," such as appearing to come from one's manager or the IT department.
PC Dynamics introduced SafeHouse Explorer, software that locks and makes invisible documents and private data stored on hard drives, memory sticks and thumb drives, network servers, and CDs and DVDs. The software creates hidden, private storage vaults up to 2 terabytes in size that are password protected under Microsoft Windows XP, Vista, Server, 32 or 64 bits. Users may create any number of vaults, and each vault appears as a new disk drive letter under Windows. SafeHouse Explorer - a 5MB EXE program - operates as a stand-alone executable file that does not need to be installed.
According to new research from PandaLabs, more than 10 million users worldwide were infected with active identity-theft-based malware last year. Based on an analysis of 67 million computers in 2008, 1.1 percent of the worldwide population of Internet users has been actively exposed to identity theft malware. Only thirty-five percent of the infected PCs had up-to-date antivirus software installed, PandaLabs says.
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Leaders Roundtable
Security:
Protecting Member Data at Rest and in Motion
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Technology and Marketing
According to consultants from Edgar, Dunn & Co., the ability to save and improve credit scores are top priorities in the minds of unbanked consumers. They say that prepaid cards offer a way to meet those needs of the one in seven U.S. adults (about 28 million people) currently lacking a banking relationship. Those with credit records make up 55% of the unbanked, of which 25% have credit scores of 605 or above. The firm argues that prepaid cards have all of the right features to appeal to this group: convenience, universal acceptance, direct debiting and security.
FORUM Credit Union introduced a program that pairs members with FORUM Representatives to be their “Financial Coach.” Members of the credit union have the opportunity to sit down with a Financial Coach and review their budget, credit history, and financial goals. The Financial Coach then follows up with the member on a regular basis to make sure the member is following their plan. Financial Coaches are available at any of FORUM’s branch locations, and members can ask for their services.
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Online Banking/E-Commerce/Website Design
FICO and Equifax introduced the BEACON Mortgage Score, a new FICO industry score specifically designed to help mortgage lenders. Equifax plans to make the new score available in April to mortgage lenders and servicers for use in their loan servicing decisions including mortgage loan modifications. FICO says that the new version of the BEACON score has significantly greater power for assessing mortgage repayment risk.
New research released by HSBC Direct shows that 49 percent of the online population conducts most, if not all, of its banking via the Internet, up nearly 23 percent from early 2007. While the research showed that 62 percent of people ages 21 to 34 conduct the majority of their banking via the Internet, approximately 40 percent of Americans ages 45 to 69 are now doing most or all of their banking online too. The findings from HSBC Direct align with projections about the future for online banking from Forrester Research that indicates 92 million or 76 percent of American households are expected to be banking online by 2011.
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Internet Access
CallTower has released what it claims is the first true hosted solution that integrates Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 with Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CallManager). San Francisco-based CallTower's on-demand CallManager solution offers a single interface and bill for telephony services, web and audio conferencing, unified messaging, voice to text, text to voice, Internet, presence, screen pops and more.
Plantronics is launching a series of headsets dubbed Savi that are designed to blend your PC and traditional land line while improving the quality of audio on applications like Skype. For business users, Plantronics’ headsets come with standard bases and customized headsets and are focused on unified communications users. Savi Office is a headset that mixes and matches calls from various outlets (PC, land line, softphones etc). Users can go up to 350 feet away from the desk and retain the wireless connection to the phone because Plantronics uses a frequency that doesn’t interfere with Wi-Fi and other signals.
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Call Centers
inContact, a provider of on-demand contact center software and agent optimization tools, recently announced integration of its inContact platform for contact centers with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. With this integration, a single sign-on option will be available for inContact and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This includes inContact's modules for call routing Automated Call Distributor (ACD), Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and outbound systems which can interact in multiple ways with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. With this, the agent is fed caller information automatically and an auto pop-up on the caller is available for the agent when the caller dials in to the system.
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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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