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General News
* Security Service FCU Upgrades FIS Core System
* 14 Puerto Rican Credit Unions Join FSCC
* Addison Avenue FCU Implements Saba’s OnDemand Software
* Navy Army FCU Selects Fiserv
Security Service Federal Credit Union (SSFCU) recently made a series of key enhancements to its core processing platform - Systematics from FIS. Systematics is a suite of retail banking applications from FIS, offering componentized member support, deposits, lending, and financial and management systems. SSFCU upgraded 10 Systematics application suites that interface to more than 65 other major applications within its technology infrastructure.
Fourteen Puerto Rican credit unions began participating in Shared Branching through Financial Service Centers Cooperative, Inc. (FSCC), the nation’s largest credit union Shared Branching network. This addition represents the first shared branching partnership with credit unions headquartered in Puerto Rico in the CU Service Centers Network.
Redwood Shores, CA-based Saba announced that Addison Avenue Federal Credit Union has installed their OnDemand management software. The Palo Alto-based credit union will use OnDemand to implement new strategic HR processes to support its 400 employees in nine states and Puerto Rico.
Fiserv, a leading global provider of financial services technology solutions, announced that Navy Army Federal Credit Union in Corpus Christi, TX has renewed its contract for account processing with Fiserv. The renewed Navy Army agreement includes new software, services and development from Fiserv including solutions for online banking, bill payment, wire transfer and fraud and risk.
Hardware News
Despite an improving economy, companies aren't moving quickly to replace servers, PCs and printers, which will likely cause an increase in failure rates over the next two years, according to Gartner. As a result of putting off new hardware purchases, the research firm says that IT operations "are going to have to start to plan for the impact of increased equipment failure rates."
Cisco unveiled the new generation of its Integrated Services Router which is a branch office platform optimized for video and virtualized services and is the cornerstone of a new Cisco architecture called Borderless Network. Borderless Network is a five-phase plan to deliver services and applications to anyone anywhere, regardless of device or network technology. The routers also enable organizations to better manage their power consumption and costs through switch modules that include the company's EnergyWise software for power efficiency. EnergyWise debuted early this year for Cisco's Catalyst LAN switches to allow users to be able to control Power over Ethernet-connected devices and track energy consumption. The ISR G2 1900 starts at $1,595; the 2900 at $1,995; and the 3900 at $9,500.
Are you tired of fishing around for unplugged cables that have fallen behind your desk? Then you may want to consider picking up BlueLounge's CableDrop clips which can be mounted on a desk or wall and they'll keep your unused power cords or other peripheral cords in place until you need them. They run $10 for a pack of six.
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Hardware Section Sponsored by
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Software Updates
Underutilized servers take up valuable space, dissipate heat, and devour kilowatts while doing little to no work. A company called 1R can help with their Server Edition of NightWatchman. Using agents, the software can generate detailed analysis to show IT Departments how much power a given server is consuming to perform what tasks. According to 1E, the solution is available for all types of server platforms and can track the performance of not only individual machines but also of virtual machines. Finally, an IT admin can use NightWatchman SE to automatically put a machine into Drowsy Server mode (a form of dynamic power management) when it's not performing useful work.
Eaton announced that its line of supervision and protection products is compatible with Microsoft’s new Windows 7 operating system. Eaton’s software family, including Intelligent Power Manager, NetWatch, Network Shutdown Module, Personal Solution-Pac and LanSafe, allows Windows 7 enterprise servers and small business PCs to be monitored and safely shut down during a power failure.
If you want to check what processes are running on a remote server, there are many ways to get this information. One option is to use the Sysinternals PsList tool, which can get you this information remotely and quickly. PsList, which is part of the PsTools Suite, is a standalone executable and can be run against a remote computer. To run against a remote computer, users with Administrator-level permission can determine the list of processes running on a Windows Server.
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Software Updates Sponsored by
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ATMs/Kiosks
Diebold has released ValiTech which is a two-factor authentication technology that uses a secure USB device to identify and authorize technicians who service ATMs. Engineered in-house by Diebold, the drive provides authorized Diebold service personnel with secure access to the system level of the ATM. This technology not only delivers an additional layer of protection for credit unions through access control, it also provides a detailed audit trail. ValiTech links each authorized service technician to a USB hardware cryptographic device - or token - using a digital certificate from VeriSign.
ATM product and services provider FTSI signed a multi-year agreement with $1.3 billion Technology Credit Union. Under the agreement, FTSI will provide first and second line ATM servicing. In addition to the responsive and preventative elements of the agreement, the deal also provides for deposit pulls and cash services.
Some analysts believe that ATMs with deposit automation functionality are the foundation of advanced self-service offerings and improved branch efficiency. We will cover this topic and provide some real world examples in the November issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe today.
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ATMs/Kiosks Section Sponsored by
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Biometric Digest Highlights - WWW.BIODIGEST.COM
Although some computers running Vista featured biometric technology, all of the drivers and support applications were delivered the third-party developers. In Windows 7, Microsoft has added biometric support, allowing computers with biometrics to work without the need for third-party software. Biometric proponents contend that it is a major security advancement and that a Windows PC is typically more secure with biometrics. At the same time, Windows 7's biometrics feature means there will be fewer third-party applications running in the environment - they argue that the fewer the third-party apps, the greater the chance of improving security, so Windows 7 biometrics is a big leap forward.
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Wireless World
Javelin Strategy & Research issued a new report that reveals that financial institutions’ marketing efforts are not keeping pace with their actual mobile-Banking services, and the imbalance is causing limited adoption of mobile banking by consumers. Key Findings of the Javelin 2009 U.S. Mobile Banking Benchmark Scorecard are:
- No institutions currently allow unique mobile enrollment or opening of accounts via mobile channels.
- Marketing positioning and placement need further work: 17 percent of financial institutions have poor accessibility to mobile offerings.
- Half of the institutions analyzed provided sufficient security messaging on their website but 17 percent included no mention of security despite this being one of the strongest factors preventing consumers from adopting mobile banking.
- Within five years, 45 percent of adults with mobile phones will use mobile banking (54 percent of iPhone users already use mobile banking on a monthly basis.)
MoadBus, Inc., a global provider of financial software and services, announced the release of its mobile banking solution, MBanking, with Quad-Mode technology: encrypted SMS, standard SMS, mobile browser and a downloadable application, within a single solution. MBanking offers a wide range of functionality including: actionable alerts, bill payments, loan and credit card payments, balance and history inquiries, internal and external bank transfers, wire transfers, stop payments, an ATM and Branch locator, as well as touch screen and touch-less navigation with integrated Text to Speech (TTS) capability.
A large financial research and consulting firm has issued an interesting new report on mobile RDC (remote deposit capture). We will tell you about their findings in the November issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe now.
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Security Section
According to Treasury Strategies, losses caused by massive fraud could bring down as many as 10 financial institutions within the next three years. The Chicago-based consultancy says small institutions are most at risk of failure from fraud, since they generally lack the tools to detect and combat fraudulent transactions and don’t have the capital base to absorb losses. However, the firm warns that even some mid-size and regional institutions could shut their doors. They say that the recession has caused many institutions to cut back on spending on fraud detection tools, and there is no going to be much spending on anti-fraud technology for the next 12 to 18 months.
In an effort to protect databases, Sentrigo puts a small "sensor" on the database host server to monitor all database transactions moving through shared memory. This sensor communicates with the company's Hedgehog server, which evaluates every action based on a set of rules that you configure or write. You can react in real-time when a rule violation is determined. Depending on the severity of the violation, you can log the event, send an alert, terminate the user's session, and/or lock out the user for a period of time. According to Sentrigo, the sensor adds minimal overhead to the database performance - about 1% to 2% of CPU usage.
Full disk encryption (FDE) systems use strong encryption algorithms to automatically protect all data stored on the hard drives of PCs and laptop computers. In the November issue of Credit Union tech-talk we will look at some prime considerations in selecting encryption solutions, as well as some dos and don'ts suggested by experts - subscribe today.
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Leaders Roundtable
Core Systems:
Helping CUs Focus on Opportunities
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Technology and Marketing
According to industry analyst Mike Moebs, nearly 45 percent of community FIs have overdraft revenue greater than net income. The solution, he says, is for FIs to charge more fees, but to spread them out across product portfolios and make them transparent so that regulators don't have reason to intervene on consumers' behalf. That would be difficult in the current economic climate, Moebs acknowledges, but says it's crucial to future profits.
Technology Credit Union recently held a successful eWaste and Shred Day. The San Jose-based credit union helped hundreds to protect themselves against identity theft by safely shredding sensitive documents and recycling electronic waste for free. The credit union's truck shredded more than 25 tons (5,000 pounds) of documents and collected nearly 30 tons (5,840 pounds) of electronic waste for recycling, including old televisions, monitors, desktop and laptop computers, printers, keyboards, fax machines, cell phones, cabling wire and UPS batteries.
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Online Banking/E-Commerce/Website Design
The Aite Group has issued a report saying that while adoption of online bill pay is still growing, the rate of increase is slowing. Bill pay vendors need to get serious about innovations if they want to reinvigorate growth rates, according to Aite. The number of U.S. financial institutions offering online bill pay in the first half of 2009 was up to 9,190 compared with 6,735 in 2006. The Boston-based research firm predicts that transactions will hit 2.07 billion this year, up only 8.9% from 1.90 billion in 2008. Last year transactions grew 13.1% from 1.68 billion in 2007.
The online banking Trojan Clampi continues to cause problems for online business bankers worldwide. For instance, criminals have stolen more than $479,000 from a Pennsylvania housing development authority after infecting one of its computers with Clampi. Once installed, Clampi captures passwords which were used to transfer the money to accounts set up by the scammers at 11 different financial institutions. Concern over the upsurge in cybercrime has moved the UK-based Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center to recommend that commercial online bankers should be induced to "carry out all online activity from a standalone, hardened and locked-down computer from which e-mail and Web browsing is not possible".
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Internet Access
Smaller organizations can now buy open source IP PBX Asterisk software as an add-on to IBM’s Smart Cube office-in-a-box package. Digium, which sells a commercial version of Asterisk, customized it to integrate with Smart Cube’s software, making the phone system manageable via Smart Cube’s management interface. Customers buy the Asterisk application from IBM’s Smart Market, and rely on IBM for support. Digium support staff is on call to IBM for tier 2 support, but customers only have to deal with IBM. The PBX software is sold in two sizes, for 20 concurrent calls ($2,000) and for 40 concurrent calls ($4,000).
According to a survey by Frost & Sullivan, business and IT managers found that their organizations got back benefits perceived as equal to four times their investment, on average, in unified communication and collaboration technologies. The online survey looked at deployments of networking tools including voice over IP phones, videoconferencing and instant messaging to support distributed work forces and teleworkers in 10 countries. The range of unified communications and collaboration tools included in the survey was broad, but generally audio- and Web- conferencing tools provided the greatest benefits to companies, followed by videoconferencing (sometimes at the desktop instead of in a room-sized location), and then instant messaging, wikis and blogs.
Network Equipment Technologies announced that HarborOne Credit Union, the largest state-chartered community credit union in New England and one of the top 100 in the country, is deploying NET's VX Series to extend the capabilities of its VoIP-enabled, multi-branch environment. NET's VX Series is a multi-service voice switch that provides high-performance VoIP communications for enterprise OCS deployments.
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Call Centers
More and more credit unions are recording all incoming or outgoing calls within their contact center environment, both for regulatory concerns and for member service quality control. Coordinated Systems is one well established vendor that is targeting credit unions with their flagship call recording suite, Virtual Observer. A quality feature set enables contact center staff to use integrated evaluation and e-learning tools for training purposes, plus Virtual Observer offers a “Data Defender” feature which helps organizations comply with specific credit card processing guidelines by securing a caller’s information and sensitive data with 256-bit media encryption.
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Call Centers Sponsored by
Telecom Recovery
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Inbound Telecom Disaster Recovery
Nothing is more important than serving your members. Telecom Recovery, which protects the communications for dozens of credit unions across the US, has a very powerful - and low cost - technology that protects your inbound calls during any kind of outage including:
• equipment failure
• carrier failure
• network congestion
• line-cuts
• disaster
• pandemic (employees forced to work remotely)
• complete evacuation
• and more…
During any of these events your members' calls would still ring to the right people - with just a few clicks on the mouse to re-route all incoming calls and faxes.
All we need is 5 minutes of your valuable time to discuss whether there’s enough of a fit to arrange a brief web demonstration at a later date.
Sign up now for a 5 minute consultation.
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Conferences
Catch Tom and Bill Rogers, Associate Editor of Credit Union tech-talk at the following conferences in 2009:
October 28, St. Louis - Green IT CIO Summit
May 19-21, Las Vegas - Credit Union InfoSecurity Conference
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