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General
News
* Open Solutions Plans To Acquire Datawest
* IPLocks Releases Version 4.1
* SecureWorks Wins CIO 100 Award
* USERS Adds Two More Hawaiian Credit Unions
* Three Credit Unions Select Teres Solutions
Open Solutions, a provider of integrated data processing technologies for credit unions, announced that it has reached an agreement with Canadian-based Datawest Solutions, a leading provider of core data processing and payment technology solutions in Canada, on the terms of a cash offer by Open Solutions to acquire all of the shares in the capital stock of Datawest. Datawest’s core data processing business primarily serves the Canadian credit union marketplace. In addition, Datawest’s payment business manages Canada’s largest ATM network.
IPLocks, a leading provider of database vulnerability assessment, continuous risk monitoring and non-repudiation audit analysis systems, announced the availability of IPLocks version 4.1. IPLocks 4.1 expands the functionality of its external, non-intrusive, cross-platform database security management system with the introduction of audit analysis for analyzing transactions and numerous other new features. IPLocks 4.1 automates the detection and notification of database reads and changes and archives events to ensure data security, integrity and availability for regulatory compliance.
Chief Information Officer (CIO) magazine, has named SecureWorks as the only Internet security company to be awarded a spot on the coveted CIO 100 list for 2004. The award recognizes organizations around the world that exemplify the highest level of operational and strategic excellence in information technology. This is the second consecutive year that SecureWorks has been honored alongside industry giants such as FedEx, Dell, Marriott, CUNA Mutual and Staples.
Credit union data processor USERS, a Fiserv subsidiary, has added two more credit unions to its roster of core processing clients in Hawaii, bringing to 25 the number of CUs in the Aloha State being serviced by the Valley Forge, PA-based company. The company says that Hawaiian Electric Employees FCU in Honolulu will convert to their system in November, while $44 million Windward Community FCU in Kailua will convert next April.
Three credit unions have joined the list of users who have selected indirect lending software from Teres Solutions, a software provider to financial lending institutions. IBM Texas Employees Federal Credit Union, Lockheed Georgia Employees’ Federal Credit Union and United Heritage Credit Union are adopting the SAIL (Software Application for Integrated Lending) Indirect product to streamline their lending programs.
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Hardware
News
The small-form-factor (SFF) desktop design has made significant inroads in the home PC market over the past several months, and is now starting to come into the corporate world. If your credit union is short on desk space, you may want to consider one of these three models: Dell OptiPlex SX280; HP Compaq dc7100; or IBM ThinkCentre A50. While these three new PCs might not look like the traditional, toaster-like SFF computer, they are quite small. Plus, these efficient little PCs are also remarkably easy to service, so if you do run into trouble, you'll be able to swap parts in and out in record time.
For credit union executives who use laptops and who miss the conventional 10-key of a full sized keyboard, Canon has, for "the first time in the world," integrated a 10-key keypad, USB 2.0 hub, and calculator into one device. You can disconnect it and still use it as a normal solar calculator. As is often the case, though, convenience is not inexpensive - the unit runs nearly $85.
A company called Copan Systems announced its disk-based alternative to tape is shipping. The Revolution 200T uses an architecture that only spins disks when data is saved or retrieved from them, effectively reducing the cost of the system. The Massive Array of Idle Disks (MAID) technology allows Copan to deliver the Revolution 200T at a cost of $3.50 a gigabyte. The Revolution 200T emulates a virtual tape library (VTL), and the firm claims that it runs one-fourth the cost of other VTLs. The Revolution 200T works with BakBone NetVault and Veritas NetBackup. Future versions will support Tivoli TSM, Legato NetWorker and Commvault Galaxy.
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Software
Updates
While Service Pack 2 for Windows XP is drawing a lot of attention these days, Office 2003 also has a Service Pack (SP1). Office 2003 SP1 is not one pack, it is actually five. The single and easily located 18MB SP1 downloadable covers only the core Office 2003 programs, namely Access, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Word and their shared programs. If you’ve got users with other Office applications, you must download separate SP1 updates for OneNote, Project, Project Server, and Visio. According to Microsoft, SP1 beefs up Outlook 2003’s e-mail filtering capabilities. It also includes roll-up security features that plug holes in Excel, Word, and Outlook. From many accounts this is a fairly safe and easy install - you don’t even have to have the original Office discs handy to deploy the pack.
Credit union admins that work with compressed files under Windows and UNIX may be interested in Alpha ZIP which is a .zip file compression and extraction utility that lets you access and carry out all .zip file-related operations from within Windows Explorer. The integrity check feature lets you verify whether a file is healthy. Alpha ZIP features support for self-extracting files, the ability to compress and email files simultaneously, integration with virus scanners, and easy conversion between different file formats. Alpha Zip can create .zip, .7z, .gz, .jar, .lha, .lzh, .cab, .tar, .uue, and .xxe files, and it can also read and extract from .ace, .arc, .arj, .rar, and .zoo files. Alpha ZIP supports Windows XP/2000/NT/98 and costs $29.95 for a single-user license.
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ATMs/Kiosks
Fifth Third Bank Processing Solutions' ATM processing services is now offering remote key and electronic journal upload for its current and prospective clients. With the remote key service, financial institutions have the ability to enter DES ATM keys from the Fifth Third host computer without having to physically visit ATMs. The remote key service enables financial institutions to remotely initialize keys in the ATM electronically without human intervention. The service represents a significant cost savings - as much as $700 per trip to the ATM - because it eliminates the need for FI personnel and/or a third party to go to the ATM to establish the keys under dual control. The service also saves time by reducing the multi-hour manual process to a few minutes, thereby reducing ATM downtime.
ATM operators and financial institutions have colluded to gouge consumers every time they used ATM cash machines, a new federal class action suit charges. The suit, filed in Manhattan federal court, complains that ATM users pay twice for the same transaction — an ATM fee to the FI and a surcharge to the ATM owner for the same. Defendants include Concord EFS, parent company of the Star ATM network, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, Sun Trust Banks, Wachovia Corp., and Wells Fargo & Co.
Kansas City-based Community America Credit Union is partnering with NCR to implement a solution to 'push' information to members through ATMs, while allowing members to 'pull' data on their accounts through electronic alerts and notifications. The solution will also allow the $1.3 billion credit union to customize account statements to include interactive marketing messages. Community America's system is powered by NCR's Customer Power eCRM and Corillian's Voyager Internet Banking platform.
******* ATMs/Kiosks Sponsored by Nationwide Money Services *******
Looking to increase Brand Recognition and provide members with surcharge free ATMs?
Nationwide Money Services, Inc.’s Branded Cash Program is the answer. Fully endorsed by the VA Credit Union League and the CU 24 Network, our Branded Cash Program provides the ATM equipment, great locations, processing, maintenance, insurance, marketing rights and surcharge free transactions for your members, you only provide the cash and cash services for the ATM just as you would if you owned them. The ATMs look and act like your own, extending your reach or filling out your current market.
Our current CU partners include: AEDC, Beacon, Bronco, Carolina Collegiate, Educators, Freedom First, Food Lion Credit Association, Heritage Trust, Martinsville Dupont, NSWC, Old Hickory, Peoples Advantage, Southeast Financial and US Courthouse.
NMS also offers their ‘ATMs Made Easy’ Program for full service ATM management and placement services if you like the idea of having ATMs, but don’t want the hassle of day to day management and the associated costs for maintenance and unplanned expenses like triple DES.
For more information about the Branded Cash Program contact Bob Colabrese, EVP of Sales & Marketing at 904-395-1147 or
bob.colabrese@GLXS.biz.
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A company by the name of Thanko Limited announced a new 2.5-inch hard drive case dubbed the "Victoria 120," which uses a combination of fingerprint recognition and hardware level encryption to protect critical data. It uses hardware level encryption, including the boot sector, so if someone were to somehow remove the hard drive from its external fingerprint-protected case, they still wouldn't be able to access the data.
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Wireless
World
Fulfilling a long-time goal, Intel has introduced its first chip set that supports all three current forms of Wi-Fi. With a chip set that includes IEEE 802.11a, b, and g technology, a notebook PC can continue to connect to corporate wireless LANs without a hardware upgrade even if the enterprise migrates to a new infrastructure. Other vendors already offer so-called "tri-mode" chip sets. Early this year Intel introduced a combination 802.11b/g chip set, but it has yet to include all three technologies. The 802.11b and g technologies use radio spectrum around 2.4GHz to deliver data at a rate of 11Mbps and 54Mbps, respectively. The less common 802.11a variant, also with a 54Mbps rate, uses spectrum around 5GHz and can be used on more channels simultaneously. Also, there is less interference in the 5GHz band.
On Track Innovations and Atmel announced they have received the first order for microprocessors in "commercial quantity" for MasterCard International's PayPass contactless payment program. OTI said it also expects orders for card readers to support rollouts of PayPass cards by issuers later this year. Atmel is a chipmaker and OTI supplies contactless operating systems, card readers, and inlays, or the card-based antennae that transmit account data to card readers via radio waves.
Just when you thought that cell phones couldn't get much smaller, NEC has rolled out the N910 model which is exactly the size of a credit card, weighs a feather-light 2.5 ounces, and is about a third of an inch thick. It actually fits in a wallet, but is currently available only in China. Naturally, you need to use a headset to talk on this super-slim phone, but somehow NEC packed a VGA camera with LED flash and a color screen onto the tiny slab.
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Security
Section
Intrusion-prevention software (IPS) has been available to organizations for some time, but big changes are in the offing with new products hitting the market. Find out more about the latest trends in IPS in the September issue of Credit Union
tech-talk - subscribe today.
It doesn’t take a techie to abuse an IT system from the inside, and inside attackers do not fit any common profile. Those are among the findings of the Secret Service and the CERT Coordination Center in a study of insider attacks against financial organizations. The report, “Illicit Cyber Activity in the Banking and Finance Sector”, is the first in a series of Insider Threat Studies in critical infrastructure sectors. The report urges FIs to “look beyond their IT and security to their overall business processes,” to secure their systems and to create a culture of security.
Little by little, a weapon against identity theft is gaining currency -- but few people know about it. It is called the security freeze, and it lets individuals block access to their credit reports until they personally unlock the files by contacting the credit bureaus and providing a PIN code. The freeze became an option in California and Texas last year, and Louisiana and Vermont will allow it beginning next July. However, the Texas and Vermont laws apply only to people who already have been victimized by identity theft. The freeze costs nothing for ID theft victims in the states it is allowed. Louisiana's freeze is also free for people 62 and older. For everyone else in California and Louisiana, the initial freeze is $10. Unfreezing it temporarily is $8 in Louisiana and up to $12 in California. But the cost of each step is multiplied by three because it must be performed with all three major credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion.
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Leaders
Roundtable
Integrating E-solutions to Enhance Profitability and Member Experience
- Cavion Plus -
http://www.cavionplus.com
Read Michael Provenzano's comments: http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/Cavionplus.pdf
- Harland Financial Solutions - http://www.harlandfinancialsolutions.com
Read Scott Bleak's comments: http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/HFS.pdf
- Hewlett-Packard - http://www.hp.com
Read Charles Gowin's comments: http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/HP2.pdf
- Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com
Read Warren Lewis' comments: http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/MS.pdf
- Open Solutions - http://www.opensolutions.com
Read Michael Nicastro's comments: http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/OSI.pdf
- PRODUCT4 - http://www.product4.com
Read Daniel Moskowitz's comments: http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/PRODUCT4.pdf
- TowerGroup - http://www.towergroup.com
Read George Tubin's comments: http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/TowerGroup.pdf
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Technology
and Marketing
A four-year-old company called AngelPoints has developed a system whereby financial institutions can track their volunteer efforts. The solution can track when employees have volunteered time in a community, whether it's reading to schoolchildren, helping at a food bank or participating in a fund-raising walkathon for a nonprofit organization. It also can help track executives' activities and the various charitable boards on which they serve. AngelPoints can provide an interface into Human Resources systems so that volunteer information can be entered into an organization's HR or financial systems. That could let them more easily record and track supplies and other costs for a charitable event. AngelPoints' flagship product, the Enterprise Volunteer Solutions suite, also offers a portal, volunteer matching, grant management and communication and messaging tools. The system can send e-mail blasts to groups of employees about upcoming events they may be interested in working on, and also can automatically send e-mails to individuals who might be a good fit for certain activities.
**Technology and Marketing Section is Sponsored by Raddon Financial Group (RFG)**
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Online
Banking/E-Commerce/Website Design
Many security experts believe that the password, as it exists today, is a dinosaur. Some argue that while one password is insufficient, two passwords may be just the ticket. They are lobbying for the computer equivalent of the security provided by a safety deposit box: Your key alone can't open the box, and neither can the FI's key; both parties need to use both keys at the same time. One method is to include with your monthly statement a card with 50 passwords printed on it - just like a scratch-off lottery ticket. When you want to log into your account online, you scratch off the silvery stripe covering one password, and then log into the website with your username, the password you created, and the password on the scratcher card. After you have used the scratched-off password, you can never use it again.
Visa is looking at prepaid cards as a new category of payments - they see prepaid as a third category, in addition to credit and debit. Prepaid cards, though a much smaller market compared to debit and credit transactions, are now growing in a big way. Some analysts think that there are four categories that comprise the prepaid market in the United States: consumer-to-consumer cards; business-to-consumer cards; government-to-consumer cards; and flexible spending cards. Financial institutions benefit from prepaid cards via the cost savings in paper reduction (from payroll cards, for example) and also by reaching a market they may not have been able to previously target.
Offering free online bill pay is paying big dividends for Vernon Hills, IL-based Baxter Credit Union. They reported that the number of members who have signed up for online bill pay grew 33% in the three-month period in which it offered the service free. Growth of the service had been “stagnant” prior to moving to waive fees effective April 1.
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Internet
Access
The head of the Federal Communications Commission said recently that the nation's telecommunications laws, written before the rise of the Internet, are "broken" and need to be fixed by Congress. Michael Powell's comments at a Progress and Freedom Foundation conference marked his strongest criticism yet of the 1934 and 1996 telecommunications acts, which created complex regulatory categories that do not clearly include the Internet. Powell singled out voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) as a "killer app for legal policy change" because it pits two different regulatory models against each other and forces governments to choose which will prevail. The two models: a highly-regulated "common carrier" environment of cable TV and telephone service, and the lightly-regulated world of the Internet. Some telecom analysts see Powell's criticisms as designed to influence the direction of the telecommunications debates that will surely arise in Congress in 2005.
In a related story, VoIP service provider Vonage made telecom news last week, raking in an impressive $105 million in new funding and pushing its service into the wireless home networking market. Some experts believe that VoIP is increasingly becoming the second focal point of convergence (after wireless), forcing network vendors, carriers, and broadband service providers to rethink their strategies and business plans. Thanks to the growth of VoIP and the spread of wireless, the old distinctions of landline, long-distance, local area, and wireless are fast disappearing. They argue that convergence will continue to push VoIP service providers like Vonage to use different technologies as they compete with larger carriers like Comcast, Verizon, and SBC, which are also developing new services.
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Call
Centers
The fact is that members waiting on hold is nearly unavoidable. The positive side of this is that you have a solid opportunity to promote products and services and inform them of just how much your credit union has to offer. Subscribe to Credit Union tech-talk and we will provide you with a little insight into several reliable MOH (message on hold) providers in the September issue.
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Conferences
Catch
Tom and Bill Rogers, Associate Editor of Credit Union
tech-talk at the following conferences in
2004:
October 6 - 11, Las Vegas, NV – Combined Council of Auto Credit Unions & Firefighter Credit Union Conferences:
http://www.ccacu.com
November 2 – 7, Orlando, FL – CU InfoTECH Conference:
http://cuconferences.com/detail.aspx?ID=20
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