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May 2, 2011 - May 6, 2011
General News
* Better Branches Adds Referral & Cross-Sell Activity Tracking Feature to Better Lobby
* Ongoing Operations Names New Vice President
* Enhanced Software Products Adds 3 New Credit Union Clients
* Xtend Wins CUSO of the Year Award
Better Branches LLC, a technology CUSO specializing in front- and back-office workflow solutions for credit unions, has enhanced its Better Lobby product with two new features called Referral and Cross-Sell Activity Tracking. Credit unions using Better Lobby can now quickly and accurately track and report on a broader range of sales and referral activities within branches.
Ongoing Operations, a leading business continuity CUSO serving credit unions nationwide, recently named Gary Yeager Vice President of Sales. Gary served as a Regional Sales Manager for several years before accepting this new position.
Enhanced Software Products, a credit union core data processing provider with more than 14 years of experience, has signed three credit unions in Wausau, WI: Marathon County Employees CU, M.E. Employees CU, and Wausau Postal Employees CU. They will be converting to ESP’s flagship Core Processing Solution, FORZA, this summer and deploy additional services such as Mobile Banking, On-line ATM/Debit Authorization and Paperless Receipts.
Multi-service provider Xtend has received NACUSO’s 2011 CUSO Collaboration and Innovation Award. According to NACUSO, the Grand Rapids, MI-based CUSO was honored for its ability to deliver critical services to credit unions and their members. Xtend is an affiliate of CU*Answers, and provides bookkeeping, member contact, back-office mortgage, partnered liquidity opportunities, shared branching, compliance monitoring and insurance services.
Hardware News
Dell has updated its enterprise Ethernet switch lineup with the PowerConnect 7000 series, adding high-availability features, low power consumption and POE (power over Ethernet). The 7000 series consists of stackable Layer 3 Gigabit Ethernet switches in a variety of configurations with 24 or 48 ports. The boxes use the Energy Efficient Ethernet standard which reduces power consumption through techniques such as putting individual ports into sleep mode during periods of low traffic which can cut per-port power consumption by as much as 50%. The 7000 series also comes with several features for high availability, including redundant and hot-swappable fans and power supplies. The PowerConnect 7048R can be reconfigured to reverse the airflow through the switch depending on the data center layout being used.
Memory problems can be some of the most difficult issues to troubleshoot. We will provide some tips for diagnosing memory problems in the June issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe now.
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Hardware Section Sponsored by
Millennial Vision, Inc. (MVi)
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Software Updates
Microsoft has released a free add-on application to Microsoft Office that analyzes the contents of a user's Microsoft Exchange calendar. The Calendar Analytics Tool can aggregate and analyze the meeting data that resides in a user's Exchange Schedule. The analysis is presented on a dashboard, which can be accessed from within Microsoft Excel. Users can also do an ad-hoc analysis, though a personalized analysis would require the user to add detailed tags onto each meeting that is scheduled. The app was built from Microsoft PowerPivot, which is itself an Excel add-on that allows users to create their own business intelligence applications.
AutoVirt is a storage virtualization tool that essentially allows you to treat all the diverse storage servers on your network as a single drive. AutoVirt 3.5 was released recently and it now features the ability to assess your storage and classify it into tiers. It can analyze where your documents are stored and make sure only certain types of document are stored in a certain tier. The new version can also treat cloud storage as another tier, letting you integrate your offsite storage with your onsite storage and managing all of it. The program also gathers information about your files, and can provide information such as what file types you have, who owns them, and how old they are.
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Software Updates Sponsored by
Raddon Financial Group (RFG)
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ATMs/Kiosks
AlarmIt Security Solutions announced that it has developed a security system that helps prevent internal thefts by ATM company employees. The Matthews, NC-based company's product is dubbed the MT3000. The MT3000 alarm system logs every authorized or unauthorized entry into the ATM, enabling ATM deployers to track employee access to their machines. The MT3000 is available in a TCP/IP or dial-up version and includes a back-up battery system.
CO-OP Financial Services and the California and Nevada Credit Union Leagues today announced a partnership that will give the Leagues' members access to CO-OP's nationwide surcharge-free ATM network. As part of the agreement, the California and Nevada Credit Union Leagues will also promote CO-OP's products such as shared branching, payment processing, call center services and e-commerce offerings.
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CU Success Stories
Here is a chance to learn about real life credit union success stories from various technology vendors through the words of their clients. This week's vendor is:
Access Business Technologies
and their client is:
ChevronTexaco Credit Union
Credit Unions - if you have a vendor that you are happy with then please let us know!
Vendors - if you have a credit union that is happy with your solutions then please let us know and we will give you a $100 discount on your Case Study!
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Wireless World
Tyfone has launched what appears to be the first solution from a third party vendor that allows any consumer with a mobile device to enroll in, and then use, mobile banking directly from a handset. The new product, which also features integration with Tyfone’s near field communication (NFC) platform for mobile payments, should help credit unions add mobile members who are not already enrolled in online banking. Tyfone’s multimode mobile banking solution offers a range of features delivered via mobile application, mobile websites or text messaging.
By some accounts, more than 1,000 financial institution apps have been introduced within the last six months. While some are just simple mobile banking apps, others include advanced functionality such as mobile photo billpay. Then there are niche apps for defined consumer segments, e.g., Shake and Bank. This iPhone/iPod Touch app is designed to give account holders a quick look at the balance in their account - simply open the app, shake your iPhone and see your current balance. It is targeted towards children to help encourage them to save more money with its simple kid friendly approach.
Fortunately, fraud has been fairly rare in the mobile channel. Yet some observers fear that this will be changing rapidly. We will tell you about their concerns in the June issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe today.
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Security Section
HTK surveyed IT leaders from a range of industries, and found that 90% of them face ongoing issues when it comes to password reset issues; with 5% claiming that it placed a huge drain on resources. Their research found that 79% of organizations in fields such as high-tech, manufacturing, banking, media and marketing still do not have an automated password reset service, such as online or IVR. The survey showed that 42% of respondents found certain times of year busier for password resets, while 86% said that it was busier after holidays and long breaks away.
PacketMotion released the PacketSentry Virtual Probe, which monitors and secures access to sensitive data in VMware clusters by delivering PacketSentry's application and identity-aware solution as a guest VM that does not require administrators' knowledge of IP addresses. The company notes that lack of visibility and control within a virtual cluster can result in unauthorized communication between VMs, mixing of trust levels within a virtual host, and failure to detect suspicious access of key information assets. The PacketSentry Virtual Probe implements multiple controls in a single application while consuming about 3-5 percent of the host's CPU. The Virtual Probe is priced at $4,995 for a 5 pack of monitored servers/VMs and $21,995 for a 25 pack.
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Security Section Sponsored by
ISN
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CU InfoSecurity Conference
The CU InfoSecurity Conference is the original and premier conference dedicated solely to credit union security. Here are just some of the comments from last year's attendees:
“Nice selection of topics and overall a very well run conference.”
“Excellent networking opportunities with associates, vendors and presenters.”
“Great speakers, super nice facility!”
“Good variety of speakers relevant to current CU security issues”
“Best conference value for the money!”
More Info & Register Now ~ 800.808.2188
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Leaders Roundtable
Security:
Securing the Credit Union from the Inside to the Outside
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Technology and Marketing
Maximizer Software announced the introduction of their new cloud-based CRM solution, Maximizer CRM Live. The company says that Maximizer CRM consolidates all contacts, action items, business communications, forecasts, reports and results into one central hub that can be accessed by a Web browser on any operating system. The platform is available at $39 per user per month for 5 or more users, or $49 per month for less than 5 users, and is powered by Microsoft Windows Azure.
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Technology & Marketing Section Sponsored by
MARQUIS Software Solutions
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Online Banking/E-Commerce/Website Design
At the recent Fourth Visa Global Security Summit, one speaker said that 61% of consumers believe cybercriminals are “one step ahead” of the card industry when it comes to data security and fraud. It was generally agreed upon that the payment card industry needs to adopt smarter technologies and risk evaluations to counter the threat of evolving cybercriminals. Visa's chief enterprise risk officer cited tokenization and encryption as examples of techniques to make the card data environment smaller and lower the risk of exposure. Ellen Richey also offered three fraud prevention suggestions: the spread of smarter payment devices that include chip-and-PIN cards, more intelligent payment transaction networks, and greater adoption of cardholder authentication methods such as two-factor authentication.
The recent RSA security breach has made many organizations nervous as evidenced by the fact that one survey indicates 44 percent of businesses are reevaluating their use of security tokens, with another 15 percent speeding up already planned evaluations of alternatives. The survey was conducted by PhoneFactor, a multi-factor authentication provider that leverages phone-based authentication in lieu of traditional tokenization. Malware such as ZeuS and man-in-the-middle attacks are driving increased interest in out-of-band security by financial institutions, plus Google's deployment of phone-based authentication has moved the cause forward, according to PhoneFactor.
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Online Banking Section Sponsored by
Confident Technologies
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Online authentication has traditionally involved a trade-off between security and usability. A single layer of password authentication is not secure, but strong authentication processes such as hardware tokens and smart cards are costly, difficult to maintain and inconvenient for your members.
Credit unions can reduce costs and increase revenue by encouraging more members to conduct business on the Web, but many consumers are still wary of online banking. In fact, 30% of consumers cite security concerns as one of the primary reasons they don’t bank online.
This white paper from Confident Technologies will examine the security threats associated with weak authentication practices on the Web, and describe new approaches for easily and affordably adding a second layer of authentication on the website that is both highly secure and easy on people.
Image-based authentication solutions from Confident Technologies can help increase security, reduce support costs and improve the member experience by adding one-time passwords using an intuitive, picture-based approach.
This white paper also describes how image-based authentication can be used with mobile phones for two-factor authentication that is more secure than sending authentication codes by SMS text message.
Click here to access the white paper.
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Internet Access
Radmin's free Advanced IP Scanner is a simple and fast way to run a quick scan to check what is on your network. Select any device and you can connect to it via HTTP, secure-HTTP, FTP or shared folders as available. AIPS supports Wake-on-LAN, remote shutdown, telnet access (requires a separate telnet client), and can launch Radmin's own remote monitoring software.
According to research firm Nemertes, only about 8% of organizations are currently using hosted VOIP/UC; however, another 12% are evaluating it for potential purchase. Right now, mostly smaller organizations are utilizing cloud-based solutions mainly to minimize upfront costs, and many of these are the same kinds of companies who bought Centrex services years ago. Some analysts believe that thanks to announcements from Cisco, Siemens, and service providers such as AT&T, BT and Verizon, cloud services for larger organizations will become a reality in the near future.
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Call Centers
Some call center experts believe that the “informal call center” is now a proven method for reducing operating costs that also boosts service levels to callers. We will explain what they mean by an informal call center and how it operates in the June issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe now.
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Call Centers Section Sponsored by
Better Branches
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Conferences
Catch Tom and Bill Rogers, Associate Editor of Credit Union tech-talk, at these upcoming conferences:
June 15-17, Las Vegas - Credit Union InfoSecurity Conference
October 9-12, New Orleans - Firefighters’ National Credit Union Summit
November 5-9, Palm Springs - Reaching Your Members in the 21st Century
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