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This Week's News is Sponsored by Better Branches ~
America’s CU Partners with interface.ai
America’s Credit Union, based in Dupont, WA, and serving over 40,000 members, plans to offer 24×7 personalized support to all its members with interface.ai’s Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA). The IVA will be initially available on ACU’s website, mobile app, and call center.
NCUA Selects Suite of Solutions from ComplianceTech for Fair Lending Exams
NCUA said it has selected a suite of specialized software products from ComplianceTech’s to complete onsite and offsite fair lending examinations and perform offsite monitoring of approximately 1,700 reporting credit unions under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA).
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Cisco Grows UCS Server Family with High-Powered AMD Processor
Cisco is using AMD’s new EPYC 7003 processor to boost performance in its Unified Computing System family of servers. They said that they will be delivering systems optimized for workloads requiring high core counts, including cloud and VDI workloads, and massive I/O-intensive workloads such as data analytics.
Microsoft Rolls out Surface Laptop 4 Alongside New Headsets and Webcam
Microsoft's spring Surface rollout includes not just the expected new Surface Laptop 4 devices, but a number of other peripherals positioned for remote work use. The new accessories include Surface Headphones 2+, two Microsoft headsets, a Microsoft-branded webcam, and a Microsoft desktop speaker.
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Windows Server 2022: These Are the Big Changes That Microsoft Has Planned
Windows Server 2022 will be generally available before the end of 2021. It will feature more integration with Azure for both management and security monitoring, including new features in Windows Admin Center for containerizing apps to 'lift and shift' to the cloud. Windows Server 2022 scales to even larger applications than previous releases and also supports confidential computing with Intel SGX on Ice Lake CPUs.
The Microsoft-Nuance Deal: A New Push for Voice Technology?
Microsoft's decision to acquire speech-recognition firm Nuance Communications could provide a real boost for voice technology, analysts said. Over the past year, the pandemic has caused an explosion in the need for voice-recognition, with most videoconferencing vendors now offering in-meeting transcription capabilities.
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Dolphin Debit Offers Next Generation ATM Locator Technology
Dolphin Debit announced next generation ATM locator technology via a Wave2 locator. The tool helps FIs simplify and enhance their location search and mapping functionality promoting branches and ATMs, retail locations, shared services, and multiple surcharge-free ATM networks. The display shows live hours, features, restrictions, photos, street views, scheduling integration, and COVID alerts — all within the FI's own web and mobile platforms.
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Here is a chance to learn about real life credit union success stories from various technology vendors through the words of their clients. This week's vendor is:
and their clients are:
Ball State FCU and Andover FCU
Credit Unions - if you have a vendor that you are happy with then please This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.!
Vendors - if you have a credit union that is happy with your solutions then please This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and we will give you a $100 discount on your Case Study!
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Security Vulnerabilities Are Common in FI Mobile Apps
Of the 107 banking applications scanned by the Synopsys Cybersecurity Research Center (CyRC), 94 contained at least one vulnerability—that’s 88 percent, well above the overall average of 63 percent. Given a total of 5,179 vulnerabilities identified, banking applications on average contained 55 vulnerabilities.
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7 New Social Engineering Tactics Threat Actors Are Using Now
Here are 7 tactics social engineering experts say are on the rise in 2021: 1. Malicious QR codes; 2. Browser notification hijack; 3. Collaboration scams; 4. Supply chain partner impersonation; 5. Deepfake recordings; 6. Text fraud; and 7. Typosquatting or lookalike domains.
Machine Learning-Powered Cybersecurity Depends on Good Data and Experience
If your data is bad, then your security machine learning tools will be insufficient. Machine learning-powered cybersecurity must also go beyond good data and incorporate extensive industry experience and defined rule sets to harness the power behind these security insights. With telemetry collection and risk detection, you have two key components of your cloud security strategy. The third component is the human element, i.e., seasoned security and IT operations professionals’ expertise.
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Technology and Marketing
Five Ways to Use Advanced Analytics to Drive Revenue
The author states that FIs are going to need to rely on creative sources to drive revenue in 2021, and growth analytics should be at the top of the list. He recommends using business analytics to: 1. Grow interchange revenue by greater credit card adoption; 2. Make more auto loans; 3. Increase investment income; 4. Retain more accountholders by looking for liquid money movement; and 5. Retain more accountholders by looking for decreasing account balances on DDAs and share accounts.
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8 Ways Digital Banking Will Evolve over the next 5 Years
The future of banking will not only look different in regard to more rapid digital adoption, but also in terms of service offerings, who offers them and the relationships FIs have with consumers. The author offers eight factors that he feels will significantly inform digital banking through 2025.
Truliant FCU Helps Pave the Way to eClosings
Truliant Federal Credit Union of Winston-Salem, NC ($3.3 billion in assets, 270,834 members) transferred the first electronic promissory note (eNote) to the FHL Bank’s Atlanta region. The eNote transfer is significant because it means mortgages that credit unions plan to hold in their portfolios can now be closed without pen and paper through electronic underwriting, signatures and electronic vault storage. When a closing is completed, the eNote is tamper-sealed and registered with the MERS eRegistry system, which also indicates the location of the authoritative copy.
NACHA Records Booming Same-Day Results
Faster-payment volume soared 88% on the nation’s automated clearing house network in the year’s first quarter compared to the same period in 2020. Herndon, VA-based NACHA last month increased operating hours for same-day ACH, while the network now settles transactions four times each day. Another adjustment, which will raise the same-day transaction limit from $100,000 to $1 million, is set to take effect in March 2022.
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Imperva Research Labs Reveals Bot Traffic Climbs to Record High
Imperva has released the Imperva Bad Bot Report 2021. The company saw the highest percentage of bad bot traffic (25%) since the inception of the report in 2014, while traffic from humans fell by 5.7%. More than 40% of all web traffic requests originated from a bot last year, suggesting the growing scale and widespread impact of bots in daily life.
Securonix, AWS Partner on New Cloud-Native SIEM Solution
AWS customers will be able to connect their accounts to Securonix's AWS-hosted SaaS security software using what it calls a "bring your own cloud" model. Securonix describes its next-gen SIEM platform as software that "combines log management; user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA); and security orchestration, automation and response into a complete, end-to-end security operations platform."
AT&T Picked as Top Managed-SD-WAN Provider for the Third Year
AT&T, Hughes, and Verizon were selected as the top three SD-WAN providers for the third year in a row in the latest Vertical Systems Group rankings for year-end 2020. Comcast jumped to fourth place. Despite the pandemic, expansion of carrier-managed SD-WAN services in the U.S. increased 39% in 2020.
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What Best Practices Can Ensure Help Desk Chatbot Success?
Chatbots provide a sense of immediacy, modernity and a consumer-first approach. They're also economically sound, when compared to the alternative of live on-call help desks. Unfortunately, as a new report from Forrester reveals, chatbots repeatedly garner low-satisfaction scores. The article states that organizations must keep their users at the center of their help desk chatbot strategies, and goes on to layout 5 critical chatbot principles.
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