Credit Union tech-talk News

August 6 - August 10, 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 to Acquire CheckFree
* Share One Signs L. G. & W. Federal Credit Union 
* Perimeter eSecurity Closes $50 Million Financing 
* Passageways Adds 100 Portal Customer

Fiserv, a leading provider of technology solutions, and CheckFree Corporation, a top provider of financial e-commerce services and products, announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement whereby Fiserv will acquire CheckFree in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $4.4 billion.

Share One, a CUSO which has a client base of credit unions with assets ranging up to $1 billion, announced that L. G. & W. Federal Credit Union in Memphis, Tennessee, with $78M in assets and serving 4,000 of the active and retired employees of Memphis Light Gas and Water Division and their families, has recently elected to implement Share One’s NewSolutions platform. L. G. & W. Federal Credit Union will convert in October 2007.

Perimeter eSecurity, a top provider of complete eSecurity on demand, announced that Goldman Sachs has invested $50 million in the company. Over 4,000 clients subscribe to Perimeter’s security offering including 1,900+ financial institutions. 

Passageways, a leading provider of Portal Solutions for credit unions, announced that Eli Lilly Federal Credit Union, a $748M credit union, has become their 100th customer. Passageways also announced that they will start offering a hosted version of their portal solution targeted towards the smaller credit unions this summer.

Hardware News

A company by the name of RippleTech offers affordable appliances designed to protect databases. The firm claims that their database extrusion prevention system boasts in-depth monitoring, zero impact on performance, and detailed auditing. Their Informant box looks for anomalous behavior and doesn't sit inline with the traffic flow. Informant currently supports Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, DB2, and MySQL. At $4,995, Informant is the least expensive database extrusion prevention system on the market.

Every credit union has old computers sitting in storage, because unfortunately today’s cutting-edge server can be tomorrow’s entry-level home PC. But there might be (and usually is) some life left in these machines. We will provide some suggestions in the September issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe now.

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

Diebold announces two teller cash automation systems: the 220 Express Cash Dispenser (ECD) and 228 Express Cash Recycler (ECR). The 220 ECD is designed to automate cash-handling tasks for tellers, while the 228 ECR, which offers the industry's only 10-denomination configuration, allows a teller to reutilize deposited cash. Both machines were specially designed to fit under existing branch counters, and also feature touch screen capabilities that enable a more intuitive user experience for servicing.

Russia-based BPC Banking Technologies has released a remote ATM master key management solution. BPC clients can now fully automate the management of NCR ATM networks and reduce the expense for servicing them. The manual loading of new master keys is quite a long and difficult process requiring special personnel, but with BPC's SmartVista system, master key management can now be performed centrally and automatically. 

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Two Washington, DC area credit unions have agreed to help enroll government employees in a new program that will speed them through airport security lines. Congressional FCU and Pentagon FCU will help a private contractor, called Clear, to enroll frequent fliers in the government’s new registered traveler program. Once in the Clear lane, you show your government issued ID and then insert your Clear card into the verification kiosk. The kiosk will read your card and prompt you to place your finger on the fingerprint reader or look into the iris reader. Once the kiosk verifies your biometrics and that you are a member in good standing, the kiosk will signal "You are Clear." You will receive a special stamp or receipt that will let TSA know you are a Clear member.

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After distributing 20 million contactless cards and fobs last year, the credit card industry is expected to ship another 25 million or so this year. As impressive as these numbers are, they pale in comparison to the 200 million to 300 million mag-stripe cards that will be shipped in 2007. What’s holding up mass consumer adoption of contactless cards? Some retailers are blaming the issuing financial institutions. Retailers such as Jack In The Box have been able to cut the time a customer with a contactless card pays for food by ten seconds over traditional credit and debit cards. Other stores report similar results but some have expressed disappointment that after investing in contactless POS terminals that card issuance is just not where they had hoped it would be. 

Many institutions experienced prolonged delays in communications services because landlines and cell phone towers were disabled after Hurricane Katrina. Some have responded by purchasing a handful of satellite phones, which they keep charged and ready in case of emergency. Other options include using Blackberries to send short text messages via satellite, or using TracFone, a prepaid wireless phone service that works across multiple cell phone carriers.

A Tennessee-based company is coming to market with a contactless product that they say allows consumers to make payments both on e-commerce sites and at the point of sale. We will explain how it works in the September issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe now.

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Security vendor SecureWorks announced that the number of criminals attempting to attack its banking clients is up 81% since last year and those attempting to attack its credit union clients is up 62% since last year. SecureWorks blocked 167 million hacker attacks in the last 30 days. Meanwhile another security vendor, Finjan, released a report detailing how new crimeware is being used to steal banking data from infected PCs. They say that the MPack toolkit has successfully infected over 500,000 unique users, and is being used to grab account information, such as user name, password, credit card number, social security number, etc. To compound the problem the crimeware downloaded by the MPack toolkit is still not detected by the majority of popular security products, thus it is very effective in infecting PCs. 

Just recently, security vendors have been alerting users to a new class of malware buried in PDF files sent via email. There has also been an increase in Excel and Word files being used. Meanwhile, Symantec is warning users of a slow increase in the deployment of malware and other exploits via older file formats such as Zip and RAR. While newer file formats such as Word and Excel are easily or automatically updated, less pervasive programs "are often harder to keep current," Symantec warns. 

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

uMonitor - 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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StayinFront, a provider of enterprise-wide customer relationship management (CRM) applications and decision support tools, announced the details of its newest version, StayinFront CRM 10. The software offers an updated user interface which can be easily deployed across a WAN or the Internet through the use of the “ClickOnce” deployment mechanism. Version 10 includes support for various features, such as established workflow capabilities and remote management.

Baton Rouge-based Campus Federal Credit Union is offering Louisiana State University students a new ‘Tiger Card’. The new one-card serves as a student and credit union ID, as well as an ATM/debit card. 

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USAA has seen success in deposit growth since it began offering remote deposit capture (RDC) capabilities to consumer depositors. Although RDC adoption by businesses has been growing at a very fast rate, Forrester believes that the service for consumers needs time to enable more secure capabilities against fraud to be put in place, and to see if mass-market consumers actually realize any benefits beyond convenience. In Forrester's new report titled "Coming Soon: Remote Deposit Capture For Consumers?," they note that "with check writing quickly dwindling as a payments instrument, RDC for consumers might not have time to evolve into readiness for mass adoption, in which case it is likely to be a bridge technology relevant for a maximum of 10 years."

Only about half of American financial institutions got their multi-factor authentication (MFA) deployments off the ground by last year, according to a new study. Celent predicts that to 90 percent will have MFA in place for their online banking system by year's end. However the report notes that FIs must add telephone and mobile banking to their MFA project lists as well, but those rollouts are even further out into the future.

Digital Federal Credit Union and Hanscom Federal Credit Union are currently testing a remote deposit capture system for their members in conjunction with Eastern Corporate Federal Credit Union. Any member who is pre-qualified and has access to online banking and a home desktop scanner can use the new service. Eastern Corporate recently celebrated the fact that they no longer process any paper checks with an ‘e-tirement party.’

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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Inter-Tel, a provider of voice and data communication solutions, has launched Inter-Tel 3000, an advanced communications system that provides VoIP connectivity to small offices. The new system can simultaneously manage multiple devices including VoIP, digital, wireless and analog systems. The package features both a new broadband module and new IP extension and scalable up to 52 extensions. It offers standard digital telephones that allow easy access to system features such as conference, transfer, personal speed dial and voice messaging. Its IP-based phone can plug and play from anywhere in the office, home or branch office through a broadband connection. 

8x8 is a national provider of residential, business and video Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone services with thousands of customers. 8x8 will work in partnership with CSI, Inc. to provide on-site professional installation and technical support services for their Packet8 Virtual Office for small business customers. CSI will provide complete set up of Virtual Office phone and configuration of iPBX services to businesses in major metro areas across the US.

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Unified messaging and contact center software is becoming more popular and affordable. We will cover one system that integrates with Microsoft Outlook in the September issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe today.

Call center furniture plays an important role in the call center - and throughout the credit union - as it has shown improvements in productivity and eliminating stress and other injuries in the workplace. A few different types of chairs are: basic, intensive task, and multi-function. A typical chair with basic adjustments will allow height and adjustable back depth adjustment. An intensive task chair offers many more adjustments, typically including back height adjustment, seat and back angle adjustment, and height adjustment. A multi-function chair will feature all of the adjustments of an intensive task but will add tension control, forward tilt, and an infinite tilt lock. Many call center experts recommend purchasing a chair with multiple adjustment options and a lifetime warranty.

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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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