Credit Union tech-talk News

June 11 - June 15, 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

* Fiserv Announces Management Changes at GalaxyPlus & USERS
* Harland Financial Solutions Delivers New Solutions
* Digital Dialogue Debuts Team Manager
* Space Coast CU Renews with Fidelity National Information Services
* Yodlee & Green Armor Form Strategic Partnership

Fiserv, owner of seven credit union core processing subsidiaries, announced that Tim Milz will be returning to the top position at GalaxyPlus, while Joe Barry will return as president of USERS. Both senior executives have long histories in the credit union movement.

Harland Financial Solutions, a leading financial software and solutions provider, announced a partnership with Associated Software Consultants whereby their GreatDocs compliant document system is now integrated with ASC's PowerLender Loan Origination and Processing System. Harland Financial Solutions also announced that they will begin offering their credit union customers secure online back-up and recovery services through a partnership with EVault. 

Digital Dialogue, a PSCU Financial Services company, announced a new work flow tool dubbed Team Manager. The application monitors, computes valuation, notifies and helps manage credit union loan queues, opportunity pipelines and other campaigns. Designed to work with Digital Dialogue's D3 Lending, New Member Enrollment, and Cross Selling suite of products, Team Manager also can be used with other credit union data sources.

Fidelity National Information Services announced that Space Coast Credit Union has renewed its existing credit and debit card processing agreement and has expanded its 
relationship by adding ScoreCard Rewards to signature debit transactions. FIS’ ScoreCard is specifically designed to help build member loyalty.

Yodlee and Green Armor Solutions announced a strategic alliance that will enable Yodlee’s online banking, bill pay, and transactional services to interoperate with Green Armor’s strong, two-factor/two-way authentication solutions. Green Armor’s Identity Cues Two Factor authentication system authenticates users to websites, as well as websites to users. 

Hardware News

There have been quite a few announcements recently in the hard disk arena. For example, Hitachi announced volume shipment of the Travelstar 7K200, a high-capacity, high-performance laptop hard drive with new optional data encryption technology. The new drive features up to 200GB capacity, a 22% overall performance improvement over its predecessor, and improved shock tolerance. The optional Bulk Data Encryption technology provides information security as data is scrambled with a key as it is being written to the disk and then descrambled with the key as it is retrieved. Meanwhile, numerous solid-state disks (SSD) were on display at the recent Computex trade show. SSDs are faster, lighter, quieter, use less power and sturdier than hard drives. Most observers think that the old technology of the hard disk is going to go away from the mobile PC market and be quickly replaced by solid-state media.

IT departments have a key part to play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and saving their credit unions money on electricity costs. In the July issue of Credit Union tech-talk we will provide a few simple steps to help "green" your data center - 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

Mid tier ATM manufacturer Triton Systems is partnering with Phi Media to deliver digital content on its ATMs. Phi Media is a provider of closed-circuit digital content on LCD screens and automated equipment, and works with Invideo Network for digital content. Phi Media's wireless LCD topper attaches to all of Triton’s ATMs and delivers full motion video, animation, news, weather forecasts, stock quotes and advertising. Triton also announced that they have selected MorphisSC from Morphis as the software platform for its worldwide technical support and services organization. MorphisSC provides real-time management of remote Help Desk facilities and field service organization functions. 

CO-OP Financial Services, well known as the nation’s largest credit union only surcharge-free ATM network, plans to expand into credit card processing. The CUSO plans to go live by the end of the year, but details have yet to be worked out on whether they will use their own card platform or process on another vendor's platform. 

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Fingerprint biometrics is increasingly making headway in laptops. Recent studies show that roughly 15% of laptops were shipped last year with fingerprint readers embedded. Some observers predict that this year that figure will double to about 30%. Biometric proponents point out that tokens and smartcards can provide a level of value, but they can be costly to manage and risky if lost or stolen. 

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The same technology that wirelessly charges electric razors and toothbrushes could soon charge your smartphone, or even your laptop. There are three basic technologies for wireless charging: radio, resonance, and induction. Some observers predict that 2007 will be the year that electronic devices will use inductive charging. This technology uses a coil to create an electromagnetic field across a charging station surface. The device then converts power from the field back into usable electricity, which is put to work charging the battery.

Wireless provider Cellular South and Kyocera Wireless, a supplier of CDMA wireless devices and accessories, have started a collaboration to launch a multi-city consumer trial for its new Wireless Wallet technology. Cellular South and Kyocera Wireless will begin the community-wide Wireless Wallet trial that allows participants to use the technology at multiple retail locations in multiple trial cities. The phone acts as a digital credit card that allows Cellular South customers to make payments and purchases by tapping it against a NFC-enabled wireless reader. 

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A distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) represents a very bad scenario for credit unions. While you can’t prevent such an attack, there are some steps that you can take to minimize the disruption that a DDoS situation brings. Learn more in the July issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe today.

Credit unions that offer safe deposit boxes to their members need to be careful about the envelopes that they use to store their members’ keys. According to David McGuinn, President of Safe Deposit Specialists, you should remove anything printed on these small key wallets that could create liability, embarrassment, adverse publicity or a potential lawsuit for your credit union. He recommends printing "Please DO NOT write your name, box number or vault location on this envelope" on each key envelope and nothing else. 

More and more states are introducing legislation that would place the onus for card re-issuance on retailers that are responsible for card data breaches. For example, California legislators recently held a hearing on a bill that would set new data security and breach-notification requirements for all organizations processing credit and debit card transactions in the state. Businesses hit by breaches would have to reimburse affected financial institutions for the costs of alerting cardholders and reissuing cards. Minnesota has already passed such a bill, but Texas has rejected one. 

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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Online Banking: 

Embraced by Members - The Next Steps

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

GalaxyPlus - http://www.galaxyplus.com   Read Jay Slavin'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

Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com Read Greg Haislip's comments: http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/Microsoft.pdf

Open Solutions - http://www.opensolutions.com   Read Michael D. Nicastro's comments: http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/OSI.pdf

TowerGroup - http://www.towergroup.com   Read George Tubin's comments:   http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/TowerGroup.pdf

uMonitor - http://www.umonitor.com   Read Dinesh Sheth's comments:   http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/uMonitor.pdf

USERS - http://www.users.com   Read Eric Panepinto's comments:   http://www.cunews.com/roundtable/USERS.pdf

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KANA Software, a provider of email, chat, call center and Web self-service software, announced that they were the recipient of a 2007 CRM Excellence Award. TMC's Customer Interaction Solutions magazine gave the California-based company the award for their knowledge management solution, KANA IQ. 

Brockton, MA-based HarborOne Credit Union has launched a new Multi-Cultural Banking Center that is designed to provide financial education and assistance to their members and communities. The Center will deliver multilingual courses on foreclosure counseling, homebuying and personal finance. 

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According to Boston-based Aite Group, only 3% of US checking accounts were opened online in 2006, however that share is expected to rise to 4% this year and to 13% by 2010. Some analysts say that automated online account-opening products can open and fund a new account for less than $20, compared to a cost of between $60 and $90 apiece for manual account openings. Of course not all people who open an account actually complete all of the paperwork - estimates vary from 50% and 70%. Yet proponents say that credit unions can still contact those people who did not complete the process and drive those numbers higher. 

Fair Isaac is adjusting their scoring process "to protect lenders and FICO scores from abuse of authorized user credit card accounts by a new kind of credit repair service that sells consumer credit card histories to credit applicants in order to purposefully misrepresent the applicants’ own credit history to lenders and other businesses." FICO 08 is the newest version of the Classic FICO credit score which Fair Isaac expects to become available to lenders starting in September. Fair Isaac says that lenders will be able to use the new version of FICO scores with minimal changes to their computers, and the new scoring model will retain the same scoring range, score reason codes, minimum scoring criteria, inquiry treatment, and related model parameters as previous versions of the FICO formula.

Phoenix-based FirstCorp Credit Union is making it as easy as possible for their members to use Remote Deposit Capture (RDC). Business members can scan checks through a small machine where they are converted into ACH payments with the money settling at the credit union, while individual members can use a scanner and small software programs to do RDC.

Revolutionary Convergence of Security Technology for Secure Internet Banking!

MagneSafe^TM P55 is a portable card reader/authenticator with four key technologies for secure online banking: Cardholder Data Encryption, MagnePrint^® card authentication technology, Website Authentication and Track 1, 2 and 3 card reading capabilities. In conjunction with MagneSafe^TM, the MagneSafe P55 is designed to offer secure, multifactor authentication for Internet banking, empowering consumers with the freedom and confidence of knowing that their transactions are protected anytime, anywhere.

MAGENSA, a Trusted Verification Authority that provides real-time, remote-hosted credential authentication services, allows credit unions to integrate PCI DSS and FFIEC compliant multifactor authentication, data encryption, website authentication, and data federation capabilities without the need for substantial financial investments or massive changes to the existing infrastructure.

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

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Florida-based credit unions, especially smaller ones, may want to look into the offer from the Florida Chamber of Commerce and App­River LLC to deliver free emergency e-mail protection to businesses in the state. The three-year-old Digital Disaster Preparedness program is available from June 1 to Nov. 30 to help Florida businesses prepare at least some of their IT systems for potential fallout from major hurricanes. The company can store and queue up incoming e-mail and hold it for a customer, forward it to a remote server or make it available online via a Web browser.

8x8, Inc., which provides its Packet8 hosted VoIP service to more than 7,000 businesses in North America, has added several new features to its Virtual Office service. By integrating Virtual Office with Outlook, 8x8 allows its users to associate their Outlook contacts with their Virtual Office extensions, making it easy to place and receive calls via their Outlook email client. In addition, incoming call details are displayed in a screen pop, just like incoming email messages are — calls from callers not in the user’s Outlook contacts display the incoming phone number. Plus, the new toll-free numbers for Virtual Office fax extensions allow incoming faxes to be sent to the Virtual Office customer for free from anywhere. Finally, 8x8 now offers an Overhead Paging Extension, an inexpensive option for adding a company-wide paging system within a facility, including branch offices, using the existing Ethernet network.

According to Sage Research, nearly three-fourths of business calls are sent to voice mail, and the average employee wastes the equivalent of two days each month playing telephone tag. Clearly telephone tag is a big time waster and frustrating for employees and members. We will cover some options in the July issue of Credit Union tech-talk that your credit union can take to minimize telephone tag and improve "presence" - subscribe now. 

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Call center consultants like to point out the fact that typically when anyone completes training, they only retain a small percentage of the information taught. That is why most of them are huge advocates for ongoing training in order to keep performance on target. Plus they say that you need to avoid any mixed messages that call center workers may receive about what's important - is it call time, first call resolution, or member satisfaction that is most important? Some experts argue that any training program must incorporate three key areas - incentives, training and quality assurance - and make sure that all three are aligned to meet the same outcomes.

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

August 9-10, Pasadena - Financial Technology Solutions International Technology Forum

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

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