Credit Union tech-talk News

April 16 - April 20, 2007

• General News
• Hardware News
• Software Updates
• ATMs/Kiosks
• Biometric Digest Highlights
• Wireless World
• Security Section
• Leaders Roundtable
• Technology and Marketing
• Online Banking/E-Commerce/
  Website Design
• Internet Access
• Call Centers
• Conferences

* Ongoing Operations Acquires CU RECOVER
* Community Financial Services FCU Chooses Summit
* L9 Partners with American Technology Services
* Open Solutions to Offer Wolters Kluwer Financial Services Products
* iTechNW Creates New Online Voting Application for Credit Unions

Ongoing Operations announced the acquisition of Baltimore based CU RECOVER, a leading provider of Business Continuity Planning products for credit unions. Ongoing Operations intends to use the intellectual property and technology assets from the acquisition to provide credit unions with improved plans and tools for both disaster recovery and business continuity.

Community Financial Services Federal Credit Union of Linden, N.J., has signed a contract to convert to the Summit Spectrum core processing On-Line solution. Summit Information Systems, a unit of Fiserv, is a leader in delivering advanced core processing solutions to credit unions.

American Technology Services announced that it has entered into a strategic partnership to host L9’s credit union client websites. Under the agreement, each firm will continue its existing businesses except that L9 will provide hosting services for credit union clients solely through American.

Wolters Kluwer Financial Services, through its line of PCi solutions, and Open Solutions announced that Wolters Kluwer Financial Services’ complete line of Wiz Sentri Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) solutions will integrate with Open Solutions’ relational core data processing platforms. Wolters Kluwer Financial Services is a provider of compliance, content, and technology solutions and Open Solutions is a provider of integrated enabling technologies for financial service providers across the United States, Canada and other international markets.

iTech Northwest, a technology solutions CUSO that serves credit unions, has created a new web-based voting application for credit unions called CastMyVote.net. Northwest Community Credit Union ($553 million; 64,986; Eugene, Ore.) was the first credit union to use CastMyVote.net for its Board elections which took place last month.

Hardware News

If your credit union is looking for older equipment or parts, you may want to take a look at the FindUEX website: www.finduex.com. You can also sell your old computers and office equipment via their auctions. They handle all types of banking equipment, as well as your standard servers, PCs, routers, etc.

In the same vein if you are looking for used Cisco equipment, Network Hardware Resale is one of the largest dealers of used Cisco network gear. They usually deliver your order within 48 hours and it generally costs about half what Cisco would charge. The company says that they have rigorous testing methodologies in place to not only ensure that their gear is authentic, but also that it functions, and basically looks, as new. Finally, everything they sell comes with a one-year warranty that includes next-business-day replacement.

Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) lets you establish varying degrees of data protection depending on the particular requirements of a given application. RAID levels 0, 1, 5 and 10 have been the most widely used, with RAID 5 often used in data centers. But it may be replaced by RAID 6 soon - find out why in the May issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe today.

MagTek®’s ExpressCard 1000 is the industry’s first “ALL-IN-ONE” instant issuance and complete card personalization platform forCredit, Debit, ATM, and Financial Gift Cards designed to fit securely and comfortably within a branch location.

For the first time, card personalization features such as color card-printing, magstripe encoding, smartcard encoding, card embossing, indent printing, and foil tipping have been combined into a single device which provides both the physical and logical security features required to meet the demands of a branch or retailer’s card issuing environment.

Equipped with MagnePrint® card authentication technology (www.magneprint.com), the ExpressCard 1000 offers the capability to capture the card's reference MagnePrint at the time of card issuance so that reference value may be used in conjunction with complementary risk management analytics with card present transactions. The ExpressCard 1000 can be connected as a peripheral to MagTek’s IntelliCAT and MCAPS 3000 PIN selection and instant issuance software suites creating a complete and secure card issuing platform.

For more information on ExpressCard 1000, go to www.magtek.com or call your MagTek sales representative at 800-788-6835.

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ATMs/Kiosks

Coinstar announced that their new Madison coin-counting kiosk has gone live. West Coast Bank's kiosks will offer a Coins to Cash feature, Coin to eCertificate, as well as the ability to accept donated change for designated non-profit organizations.

Florida Commerce Credit Union (FCCU) is expanding its use of “No Envelope” Deposit technology from NCR Corporation. FCCU has installed six units, and has plans for further expansion throughout the year. Symitar, a subsidiary of Jack Henry & Associates, provides the transaction-processing service at FCCU, using NCR’s ImageMark ATM deposit technology.

Cabrillo Credit Union has come up with a unique way of overcoming objections to their lack of ATMs. The San Diego-based credit union has their SEGs identify the nearest ATM to their offices and Cabrillo will subsidize the costs of their members to use those ATMs. While members may initially be charged a fee to use the ATMs, the credit union reimburses them after the fact.

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Konica Minolta announced that their bizhub PRO product line of color and monochrome multifunctional printers (MFPs) now support biometric security. They claim that they offer the industry's first Biometric Authentication Unit, in which the vein patterns of a finger are scanned, encrypted and stored, and are used to distinguish individuals.

The Wall St. Journal recently reported on biometrics and about the expanding use of fingerprint biometrics. They noted that about "10% of new laptops sold in the U.S. come equipped with tiny, inexpensive fingerprint censors, eliminating the need for people to remember passwords."

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Gemalto and Banksys have launched an SMS-powered mobile payments service in Belgium, which the companies say is the first ever secure SMS payment service. Banksys developed a technology, called a-banxafe, which works with every major FI in the country. Once a potential user signs up, he or she simply keys a payment request into their mobile phone, the payee receives payment details by SMS and accepts them using a PIN code. Once completed, both parties get confirmation via text.

Mercator Advisory Group released a new report entitled "US Mobile Banking And Payments: Finding The Seams, Accelerating The Pace." Mercator Advisory Group forecasts mobile banking fee revenues available to the mobile ecosystem of financial institutions, mobile operators, vendors and networks to exceed $1B in 2011. "Unlike previous one-sided efforts by mobile operators and banks, today's mobile banking applications leave something on the table for all the participants in the mobile financial services ecosystem. That's what has been missing up to now; business models that work for banks, mobile operators, platform and network vendors," says George Peabody, Research Manager of Mercator Advisory Group's Debit Advisory Service.

Meanwhile the Online Banking Report has issued their Mobile Payments Report that looks at how the market is expected to evolve and how financial institutions should position their mobile offerings. They say that financial institutions today can and should use mobile information delivery to enhance the credit/debit card experience and reduce fraud. But they believe that when it comes to the rollout of mobile finance in North America, banking and payments will arrive in two distinct phases. They predict that mobile banking will lead the way, but that significant adoption of actual payment transactions, either remotely or at the point of sale, i.e., mobile payments, is still years away.

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FullArmor recently announced a product that takes existing security policies which have been created and enforced by Active Directory inside the network, and makes them portable, enforceable and auditable when the laptops or PDAs are outside the reach of the directory. The firm says that FullArmor EPM enforces consistent policy settings on endpoints whether they are connected or disconnected from an organization's Active Directory. This capability enables organizations to use their existing Group Policy infrastructure to intelligently enforce endpoint policy settings as devices connect and disconnect from the network.

Maine-based Identity Cops Inc. announced the launch of “IDENTI-FI,” a financial services industry software suite that helps protect financial institutions by scouring the Internet “Undernet” for hacked or stolen corporate data. Using Identity Cops’ patent pending Privacy ProBot technology, web-based data is analyzed in real time for a credit union’s unique information patterns and data signatures that may indicate mass data theft or member identity theft.

A zero-day (or zero-hour) attack is a computer threat that exposes undisclosed or unpatched computer application vulnerabilities. However, there are measures that your credit union can take to try to mitigate the risk from unpatched vulnerabilities. We will cover some of them in the May issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe now.

MAGENSA™ is a trusted verification authority (TVA) that provides real-time remote-hosted credential authentication services. These services enable credit unions, financial institutions, businesses, and government agencies to integrate PCI DSS and FFIEC multi-factor authentication and end-to-end data encryption capabilities into their existing processing environments without the need for substantial financial investments or massive changes to the existing infrastructure.

Specifically tailored to enhance the security of internet banking and ATM applications, MAGENSA delivers unprecedented security and authentication using the familiar magstripe card credentials (secure tokens) that a credit union has already issued to its members. MAGENSA is powered by the trusted and proven card authentication technology known as MagnePrint® (www.magneprint.com). MagnePrint differentiates a members’ authentic magstripe card from an altered or counterfeit version, transforming the traditional magstripe card into a powerful security token.

MAGENSA’s Secure Data Center (SDC), a reliable 24x7 operations center that is maintained 365 days a year, simplifies the integration of data decryption and MagnePrint scoring into existing websites, and allows for data federation across institutional domains.

For more information on MAGENSA, please visit www.magensa.net or call 877.MAGENSA.

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SECURITY: 

Finding a Balance between Security and Convenience

Arcot - http://www.arcot.com   Read R. 'Doc' Vaidhyanathan's comments: http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/Arcot.pdf

Code Green Networks - http://www.codegreennetworks.com   Read Chip Hay's comments:   http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/CGN.pdf

Comodo - http://www.comodogroup.com   Read Andrew J. Pynes' comments:     http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/Comodo.pdf

Corillian - http://www.corillian.com   Read Greg Hughes' comments:    http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/Corillian.pdf

Digital Resolve - http://www.digital-resolve.net Read Dennis Maicon's comments: http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/DigitalResolve.pdf

e-DMZ Security - http://www.e-dmzsecurity.com   Read Kris Zupan's comments:   http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/e-DMZ.pdf

GalaxyPlus - http://www.galaxyplus.com   Read Vince Francone's comments:     http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/GalaxyPlus.pdf

Harland Financial Solutions - http://www.harlandfinancialsolutions.com   Read Niles Bay's comments:   http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/HFS.pdf

Intrusion - http://www.intrusion.com   Read Jay Barbour's comments:   http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/Intrusion.pdf

MagTek - http://www.magtek.com   Read Kiran Gandhi's comments:   http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/MagTek.pdf

Network Armor - http://www.networkarmor.com   Read Stephen Goldsby's comments:   http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/NetworkArmor.pdf

Perimeter Internetworking - http://www.perimeterusa.com   Read Kevin Prince's comments:   http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/Perimeter.pdf

RSA Security - http://www.rsasecurity.com   Read Marc Gaffan's comments:     http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/RSA.pdf

SecureWorks - http://www.secureworks.com   Read Jon Ramsey's comments:   http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/SecureWorks.pdf

Symitar - http://www.symitar.com   Read Larry Widel's comments:   http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/Symitar.pdf

TriGeo Network Security - http://www.trigeo.com   Read Michelle Dickman's comments:   http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/TriGeo.pdf

WhiteHat Security - http://www.whitehatsec.com   Read Jeremiah Grossman's comments:   http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/WhiteHat.pdf

WinMagic - http://www.winmagic.com   Read Joseph Belsanti's comments:   http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/WinMagic.pdf

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Customer relationship management (CRM) software solutions come in many flavors: an on-premise CRM solution, the privately managed on-demand CRM solution, the shared on-demand CRM solution, and the hybrid CRM solution. Oracle has come out with a white paper entitled "Which CRM Deployment is Right For You?" that covers these various options. It can be obtained here:
http://www.tmcnet.com/tmc/whitepapers/white-paper.aspx?id=162

Credit union consultant Tony Ward-Smith developed a high performance tracking system many years ago as a way of measuring effectiveness of credit union performance across the country. If your credit union would like to compare how you fare against his list of top performers, you can visit: www.ward-smith.com.

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For the first time, consumers in Internet-connected households are paying more of their bills online than by paper check, according to a new study conducted by Harris Interactive and the Marketing Workshop. Online payments made up 39 percent of the total volume of bill payments among online households, an increase of 4 percent over the previous December 2005 survey. In contrast, the volume of checks sent through the mail fell 4 percent to 34 percent of the overall volume. Some 85 percent of consumers surveyed said, "paying bills online saves the paper, stamps and the hassle of paying bills by check."

Security vendor F-Secure is calling for ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the organization responsible for the global coordination of the Internet’s system of unique identifiers, to introduce a .safe domain name to be used by registered financial organizations. If ICANN introduced a .safe domain (or .sure), which could only be used by registered financial institutions, it would allow security providers to create better software to protect the public, according to F-Secure. They contend that if .safe or .sure is locked down, then security companies would have a much better set of assumptions to start with when filtering email and web traffic and taking down phishing sites.

Analyst firm Celent is predicting that online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending could reach more than $5 billion in originations by 2010. Currently it only constitutes about a $300 million market - just a tiny fraction of today's $2 trillion loan market in the U.S. Prosper and Zopa are the big names in P2P lending, but look for other companies to jump in soon.

Revolutionary Convergence of Security Technology for Secure Internet Banking!

MAGENSA, a Trusted Verification Authority that provides real-time remote-hosted credential authentication services, allows credit unions to integrate PCI and FFIEC compliant multifactor authentication, data encryption, website authentication, and data federation capabilities into existing infrastructures.

MagneSafe P55 is a portable encrypting card reader with MagnePrint card authentication technology. In conjunction with MAGENSA, the MagneSafe P55 is designed to offer secure Internet banking, empowering consumers with the freedom and confidence of knowing that their transactions are secure and protected anytime, anywhere. Additionally, the MagneSafe P55’s LED provides a visual cue for the user to indicate when a secure connection to an authentic website has been established.

For more information about the MagneSafe P55 or MAGENSA, visit www.magensa.net, or call 877.MAGENSA.  

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AT&T said it has begun offering a network-based security service that helps monitor Web content and messaging traffic, and scan and screen for malware. AT&T Web Security delivers these capabilities and more as a network-based managed service, letting organizations deploy and upgrade security capabilities without owning and running the applications or underlying hardware/software.

In a related story, Zihtec announced Internet Control for Businesses (ICB), which blocks instant messaging programs, access to inappropriate websites and prevents employees from shopping online or taking care of personal business during work hours. Employers can use the product to restrict Internet usage to certain hours of the day, such as lunch breaks, or to restrict online chats to certain departments and to specific times. ICB pricing is a one-time fee of $39.95 per computer.

Managed Service Providers (MSP) are helping with branch locations in numerous ways: network services/circuits, WAN infrastructure, LAN infrastructure, servers, telephony, implementations, ongoing management, training, etc. In the May issue of Credit Union tech-talk, we will cover some best practices guidelines on how to most effectively work with MSPs - subscribe now.

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Five9, a provider of on-demand call center services, has introduced two call center packages designed for small businesses. The California-based company offers: The Five9 Call Center Suite, Small Business Edition and the Five9 Inbound Call Center, Small Business Edition. These packages are out-of-the-box tools that provide inbound and/or outbound call center functionality designed specifically for small teams that spend the majority of time on the phone as part of their daily activities. The solutions include four concurrent seat licenses, twelve phone lines, supervisor and administrator applications, as well as additional customer support and training features.

The Financial Service Centers Cooperative announced that their Custom Call Center Outlet handled a record 501,514 transactions during the first three months of 2007. Digital Dialogue, which manages the 24/7 Custom Call Center services, noted that they are on track this year to double the 1,271,804 transactions handled in 2006.

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Catch Tom and Bill Rogers, Associate Editor of Credit Union tech-talk at the following conferences in 2007:

June 7-8, Las Vegas - Credit Union InfoSecurity Conference

October 10-13, Albuquerque - Firefighters' National Credit Union Summit

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