Bank to the Future

In the banking industry, hard times and holidays equal holdups, but one area financial institution has designed itself around cutting-edge robbery prevention.

According to Vice President Butch Holley, the Augusta Metro Federal Credit Union branch is the only "bank" in 150 square miles with such a forward-thinking layout.The unorthodox concept feels more like a Starbucks than a bank — right down to the smell. “If I could make the smell of apple pie appear when you walk in the front door, I would,” Holley says. “Since I can’t, the coffee pot is the next best thing.”

While the amenities are obvious and unconventional for a financial institution, they’re designed around security. Take the pod system, which places the member side by side with the teller. Though such a setup might appear more exposed and vulnerable, the pod is actually built around a cash-dispensing unit, which is, in effect, its own ATM. In other words, a vault.

Each pod also has a security camera, a signature pad and an ID scanner, which makes it very easy to make sure the customer actually belongs to the account he’s trying to access.

The most impressive piece of technology, however, is the biometric hand scanner, which allows entry into the safety deposit box vault.“It’s a little James Bondish,” Holley admits, “but now you don’t have to wait for a vault teller, and people love that.”

The scanner itself only takes about five minutes to program, and, from there, a customer only has to enter his code, scan his hand and he’s allowed access to the vault.

December - News & Views Below

CU SECURITY & TECHNOLOGY News - Providing a brief summary of news and information related to security and technology issues for credit unions - Plus some interesting and fun web sites.

(Click on photos to enlarge)

Counterfeiting arrests up 28% this year

As the economy sours, more consumers are trying to pass counterfeit bills, according to a Sunday USA Today article.

The number of arrests for counterfeiting increased 28% this year and is the highest since 2004.

Counterfeiters passed a record $64.4 million in fake bills--a 5% increase over last year.

The spike in counterfeit bills is due to the struggling economy, Lt. Alfonzo Cook of the Moultrie, Ga., detective division, told USA Today.

More technologically advanced printers and scanners make the bills easier to duplicate, the newspaper said.

Police say counterfeiters use the fake bills for small purchases--such as $20 for gas and food. Counterfeiters also use the bills to pay for holiday gifts.

The holidays are a great time to use counterfeit bills because cashiers are overwhelmed, said John Large, Secret Service special agent.

Talk About Technology: USB Toaster

Don’t be tethered to the kitchen. Take your toast…to go! Now you can take a toaster everywhere you take your laptop. Insert a slice of any bread—white, wheat, even rye—and in 7-9 minutes, you have the kind of perfect toast you could only get from a computer.

Winner of the 2006 Gold Floppy Disc Award for Best Cooking Peripheral. No. It's not real. But the box is. Great gag gift for the technie in your family or office.

http://store.theonion.com/gotcha-gift-box-usb-toaster-p-71.html

Crimes via Text Messaging

A woman has changed her habit of how she lists her names on her mobile phone after her handbag was stolen. Her handbag, which contained her cell phone, credit card, wallet, etc. was stolen.

Twenty minutes later when she called her hubby, from a pay phone telling him what had happened, hubby says 'I received your text asking about our Pin number and I replied a little while ago.'

When they rushed down to the bank, the bank staff told them all the money was already withdrawn. The thief had actually used the stolen cell phone to text 'hubby' in the contact list and got hold of the pin number. Within 20 minutes he had withdrawn all the money from their bank account.

*Moral of the lesson: do not disclose the relationship between you and the people in your contact list. Avoid using names like Home, Honey, Hubby, Sweetheart, Dad, Mom, etc.... and very importantly, when sensitive info is asked of you through texts, CONFIRM by calling back.

*Also, when receiving a text from your friends or family to meet them somewhere that is not planned or usual, be sure to call back to confirm that the message came from them. If you don't reach them, be very careful about going places to meet 'family and friends' who text you.

As of right now, I no longer have 'home' named on my cell phone.



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Things that are about to Go Extinct in America

25. Pit Toilets -- By the 2000 Census, the number of Americans who lacked indoor plumbing was down to 0.6%.

24. Yellow Pages -- This year will be pivotal for the global Yellow Pages industry.

23. Classified Ads -- The Internet has made so many things obsolete that newspaper classified ads might sound like just another trivial item on a long list.

22. Movie Rental Stores -- While Netflix is looking up at the moment, Blockbuster keeps closing store locations by the hundreds.

21. Dial-up Internet Access -- Dial-up connections have fallen from 40% in 2001 to 10% in 2008.

20. Telephone "Land Lines" -- Acording to a survey from the National Center for Health Statistics, at the end of 2007, nearly one in six homes was cell-only

19. Chesapeake Bay Blue Crabs, Maryland's icon, have been fading away in Chesapeake Bay.

18. VCRs -- For the better part of three decades, the VCR was a best-seller and staple in every American household until being completely decimated by the DVD, and now the Digital Video Recorder (DVR).

17. Ash Trees -- In the late 1990's a pretty, iridescent green species of beetle, now known as the emerald ash borer, hitched a ride to North America

16. Ham Radio -- Amateur radio operators enjoy personal (and often worldwide) wireless communications with each other

15. The Swimming Hole, thanks to our litigious society, is becoming a thing of the past.

14. Answering Machines -- The increasing disappearance of answering machines is directly tied to number 20 of our list -- the decline of land lines.

13. Cameras That Use Film -- It doesn't require a statistician to prove the rapid disappearance of the film camera in America.

12. Incandescent light bulbs -- Just a few years ago, the standard 60-watt (or, yikes, the 100-watt) bulb was the mainstay of every U.S. home.

11. Stand-Alone Bowling Alleys -- BowlingBalls.US claims there are still 60 million Americans who bowl at least once a year.

10. The Milkman -- According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in 1950, over half of the milk delivered was to the home in quart bottles.

9. Hand-Written Letters -- In 2006, the Radicati Group estimated that, worldwide, 183 billion e-mails were sent each day.

8. Wild Horses -- It is estimated that 100 years ago, as many as two million horses were roaming free within the United States.

7. Personal Checks -- According to an American Bankers Association report, a net 23% of consumers plan to decrease their use of checks over the next two years.

6. Drive-in Theaters -- During the peak in 1958, there were more than 4,000 drive-in theaters in this country.

5. Mumps & Measles -- Despite what's been in the news lately, the measles and mumps actually, truly are disappearing from the United States.

4. Honey Bees -- Perhaps nothing on our list of Disappearing America is so dire; plummeting so enormously; and as necessary to the survival of our food supply as the honey bee.

3. News Magazines and TV News -- While the TV evening newscasts haven't gone anywhere over the last several decades, their audiences have.

2. Analog TV -- According to the Consumer Electronics Association, 85% of homes in the U.S. get their television programming through cable or satellite providers.

1. The Family Farm -- Since the 1930's, the number of family farms has been declining rapidly.

See the entire list with more information on each category at: http://baycore.net/mb/index.php?action=printpage;topic=12196.0

Secure Your Car by Not Using the Electronic Lock on Your Key Chain

I locked my car --- as I walked away I heard my car door unlock I went back and locked my car again three times. I looked around and there were two guys sitting in a car in the fire lane next to the store. When I looked straight at them they did not unlock my car again.

How to lock your car safely...

While traveling, my son stopped at a roadside park. He came out to his car less than 4-5 minutes later and found someone had gotten into his car, and stolen his cell phone, laptop computer, GPS navigator briefcase - you name it. He called the police and since there were no signs of his car being broken into, the police told him that there is a device that robbers are using now to clone your security code when you lock your doors on your car using your key-chain locking device. They sit a distance away and watch for their next victim. They know you are going inside of the store, restaurant, or bathroom and have a few minutes to steal and run.

The police officer said to be sure to manually lock your car door-by hitting the lock button inside the car. That way if there is someone sitting in a parking lot watching for their next victim it will not be you. When you hit the lock button on your car upon exiting, it does not send the security code. But if you walk away and use the door lock on your key chain, it sends the code through the airwaves where it can be stolen.

Be aware. Look how many times we all lock our doors with our keys. Just to be sure we remembered to lock them, and,bingo, someone has our code and whatever was in the car can be gone in minutes.

Keep safe everyone!

Liquidity

Biometric Face Recognition System Leads to First Arrest

The Sagem Morpho MorphoFace Investigate (MFI) system has scored its first arrest in Pierce County, Washington. The Pierce County Sheriff’s Department used the MFI biometric facial recognition application to identify a suspect by comparing an automatic teller machine (ATM) photograph against the department’s digital database of 350,000 mug shots.

Sagem Morpho’s MFI is a robust and scalable facial recognition application that includes case evidence management, biometric matching, and forensic evaluation tools for investigative and crime solving tasks. The automated system enables law enforcement and intelligence analysts to quickly compare photographs of suspects against large databases of images, such as mug shot, driver’s license, or terrorist watch lists, and make identifications within seconds.

Located in the Seattle Metropolitan area, the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department (PCSD) became the first law enforcement agency in the United States to deploy the MFI system as part of a pilot initiated in summer 2008. In the booking process, PCSD uses an Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) to check if a suspect is in its criminal database and then fingerprint examiners to validate the results. The addition of the facial recognition tool for mug shot comparison allows PCSD to validate biometric identifications with a single examiner, reducing demands on staff and speeding the overall process.

“[MFI] eliminates 80 to 85 percent of the work in booking repeat offenders,” said Steve Wilkins, PCSD Forensic Investigations Manager. “Within minutes, the criminal record can be updated.”
PCSD took the MFI application a step further in September to help break up a local identity theft ring that had been stealing ATM cards and using them to withdraw money from the victims’ bank accounts. The only evidence obtained by detectives was a grainy photograph taken of a suspect by an ATM camera during one of the fraudulent transactions. Despite the poor quality of the photo, MFI searched the 350,000-mug shot digital database and returned two possible matches in less than 5 seconds.

FDIC Analysis: Banks Charging Billions in Overdraft Fees

On the heels of a new FDIC study showing that banks are charging Americans billions of dollars in overdraft fees, The Center for Economic and Entrepreneurial Literacy (http://www.econ4u.org/) is educating consumers about the importance of avoiding these fees. Most people do not realize that a bank overdraft fee comes at a higher interest rate and greater cost than any other imaginable loan.

A customer who makes an on-premise purchase with a debit card and overdraws their account by $20, paying it back in two weeks later, will suffer an average overdraft fee equal to 3,520 annual percentage rate (APR) in interest. And it could be even worse! If the customer overdraws by just $1 and pays it back in two weeks, some of the higher bank fees - $37 or more – are the equivalent of 96,200 percent APR. Those interest rates dwarf by wide margins what a borrower would pay for a wire transfer loan from a friend or family member, a credit card cash advance, or a short-term payday loan.

The small sample of banks surveyed by the FDIC earned $1.97 billion in overdraft-related fees in 2006, representing 74% of their overall $2.66 billion in service charges on deposit accounts. Outside groups estimate that banks in total cleared $17.5 billion in 2007 in overdraft fees alone.

Large banks often reorder transactions from largest to smallest in order to maximize the number of charges and fees they can collect for overdrafts or bounced checks. It is estimated that that nearly half of consumers pay overdraft fees every year! And the FDIC survey found that the most vulnerable Americans – youth and those with lower incomes – were more likely to be hit with these fees.

“Borrower beware: The myth of the responsible neighborhood bank is long gone, as the most vulnerable Americans are being hit with hidden fees and service charges,” said James Bowers, managing director of the Center for Economic and Entrepreneurial Literacy. “Somehow overdrafting checking accounts became a common practice, particularly among young Americans. The public needs to understand that the interest and fees on these overdrafts are far more expensive than any other conceivable form of short-term borrowing.”

200 Million Weapons Owned by US Citizens

A recent reply at a security sight caught my attention . . .

"The Coming Terrorist Attacks VERY IMPORTANT REPORT

Today I read that 200,000,000 weapons are privately owned by US citizens and 30,000 people per year are killed by these weapons. Is somebody able to explain me why 30,000 victims per year are tolerated whenkilled by private weapons, but far less cannot betolerated when killed by terrorists or even in war?

What is the difference for the victims?

Unfortunately, the news message did not inform about the number of peoplewho could be saved by private weapons. Maybe, this number is higher than 30,000. If so, it would not be a satisfying but an intelligible answer for me. But I would prefer that the 30,000 is ahoax!"

Between Google and LinkedIn, identity management becomes a farce

What I find amazing is the number of people who are involved in various aspects of security and supposedly aware of basic security policy, continue to provide endless information about themselves and all the people they are connected with on LinkedIn. Every day, LinkedIn sends a daily bulletin to members with a list of new members who have joined the list of a members you are connected with including who they know and to which organizations they and their associates belong.

Members are more interested in having as many contacts as possible than they are about their own privacy or security. Between Google and LinkedIn, identity management becomes a farce.

One becomes a member simply by sending their true or alias name to LinkedIn. If I were to submit a well known and semi-famous alias that is known to several members of the group, I am sure that they would be flattered to have me on their list of LinkedIn associates and would be openly invited to join their list. I would slowly move up the ladder with their LinkedIn associates. Then by simple social engineering I would move about freely obtaining information and recommendation without any problem. I could then send to any of these trusting persons emails outside of LinkedIn with an innocent attachment containing a simple Trojan program that would allow me to obtain any data I needed from their computer.

Many years ago, I was invited by a friend to join LinkedIn. Flattered, I replied and filled out the application form. The very next day, I received an email bulletin containing the name of the member who invited me to join with his full biography. Soon, I began receiving requests from people I knew and had never heard. The potential dangers became all to apparent and I just stopped.

Identity management is not only academic, it is an everyday policy that people in the digital world need not only preach but practice.

Jwaala Wins CUNA Technology Council’s 2008 “Best of Show” Award

The CUNA Technology Council awarded its 8th Annual BAI Retail Delivery Conference “Best of Show” award, to online banking innovator Jwaala for its MoneyTracker online banking applications. With an impressive list of powerful features and capabilities, MoneyTracker, is shaking up the industry with an exciting look at things to come in online banking. Logon to www.jwaala.com for a demo, today!

Employee perceptions of CUs have operations implications

A Filene Research Institute study concludes that employees' perceptions of their credit union may have implications for management about the credit union's operations in six areas.

The study, "Employee Perceptions of Credit Unions: Implications for Member Profitability," was the topic of a News Now story Sept. 24.

Further implications of the study's findings for senior management are also discussed, according to a review by the Texas Credit Union League (LoneStar Leaguer Dec. 3).

The six implications are:

1. Credit unions are different. If employees commit to what a credit union is, member outreach should be more successful. "It is one thing to claim, 'We have low interest rates on loans,' but is quite another to be able to say why."

2. Employees are "almost there." They are fairly committed to the idea of a credit union, and they almost unanimously agree that knowing about credit unions is important. Still, the shared understanding remains mostly implicit and is not readily articulated. When asked to explain credit unions in a face-to-face context, employees generally offer only small parts of the whole.

3. "Ours is not to reason why." Most employees do not see the credit union's characteristics as logically or causally connected. They associate different features with these but not in a clear fashion. The study suggests embedding causal ideas within a story or mythic framework to reach rank-and-file employees. This would give them a template for explaining credit unions to nonmembers.

4. Trust may be a hidden strength. "Trustworthiness" describes a credit union, but it did not figure prominently in the way employees talk about credit unions in face-to-face interviews--a missed opportunity for credit unions to build on trust as a primary differentiator. Trust may be a feature best expressed tangentially but it is an asset that should not be ignored, the study said.
5. Some employee groups are not as 'on board' as others. One such group is the most educated group. Many of these employees may see credit unions as substituting ideology and emotion for performance. They are more negative about credit unions' future, see more "dead wood" among fellow employees, and see deficiencies in efficiency, competence and professionalism.

6. Local institutional cultures matter. Employee commitment, consensus score, degree of trust and wanting to know about credit unions vary significantly by local credit union. That means local management styles and education programs can make a difference; these indicators rise and fall together, suggesting each influences the rest; and all are to some degree contagious in the sense that levels of commitment, trust and so one are self-propagating among employees.

10 classic clueless-user stories

Technology may be evolving at warp speed, but one thing about IT will never change: Techs love to swap stories about the deficiencies of their users. The dumber, the better. That's just the way it works. How else are you going to make it through the week if you don't get to shake your head in disbelief after hearing at least one tale of epic confusion, ignorance, or arrogance?

>> Icon by any other name

I had one user, the sweetest lady, who was not very computer literate. After she got her new computer, she said, "Where are my programs?" I told her that I had made shortcuts on her desktop to the programs she used. She said, "When I click on the icon, that's not the right program." When I asked her which program she was referring to, she said, "The third icon down." I asked her which program that was. "Oh, I don't know the name of it. I just know on my old computer, it was the third icon down program."
This one took a while.

>> Money's worth

Client: I don't understand why that accounting software cost so much. It's only been used once.
Consultant: What do you mean, it's only been used once? You use it every day.
Client: No, I don't. You used it once when you put the program on my computer and it's been sitting in the box ever since.
...Time to get my money up front....

>> IRQ sale

One of the contractors in my office ordered a new computer through his company. Unfortunately, he ordered a NIC with an RJ45 connector and we were on a coax network at the time. This was back in the days of Win95. I informed him of the problem and said I had a spare NIC to give him if he would order the correct NIC to replace the one I provided.

He got on the phone with his company and complained about the NIC. This guy thinks he is a computer genius, but really just thinks that bigger, better, and more are always the solution. So he ordered everything he could think of in this computer. Not a single bay was open and most of the slots were filled. Needless to say he had an IRQ problem. His company gave him the number of the computer company and told him to call their sales department. I was happy to see him on the phone because then he wasn't bothering me while I set up his computer. I overheard him say to the sales department, "My land guy says I'm out of IRQs. Can I buy some more of those?"
>> Retention dissension

We currently have a great policy for keeping e-mail to a minimum. It's only kept 90 days, then it's deleted, so if you want to save it past the retention period, you have to put it into a file somehow.This has been in effect for several years, but amazingly, we had a couple of executives in the legal dept who built up 40,000 messages in their inboxes each, without having any deleted. I finally got the connection when the new "retention

>> ####

One of our marketing managers complained that he couldn't make any sense of a telephone management spreadsheet I'd sent him because he couldn't see when the calls were made. I explained that each worksheet in the spreadsheet had a name and the name indicated the applicable month. Two minutes later, he arrived at my desk saying that he still couldn't make any sense of the spreadsheet because there were no dates in the worksheets. I opened my copy and showed him that the dates and times were in column A. He then tried to tell me that I had sent him the wrong file because his column A just had "stars" in it! Oh boy—was his face red when I showed him how to expand the column! Makes you think, huh?!

To chuckle at the rest of the stories, go to: http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tr/downloads/home/dl_10_clueless.pdf

Companies That Don't Believe in Christmas

Don't you just hate it when people or organizations want to change history?

It's this time of the year when some companies and organizations don't want to recognize "Christmas." They sort of want it to go away - but only after they take your money. They want to pretend it never existed - but only after they take your money. They want to make sure certain groups are happy - but only after they take your money.

Let's see. How long has Christmas been around? About 2,008 years or so. The same is true of many holidays being around for a long time. Easter is another one. How about Memorial Day? I don't like the word "Memorial." It's a bit of a negative word. How about we get a movement underway to call it something else . . . like "That Day," or "National Shopping Day."

Here's a company that doesn't believe in Christmas - Costco (but only after they take your money).

Costco has 520 stores nationwide. But you will not find "Christmas" in a single store.

That's because Costco says it will not use the term "Christmas" on its website or in its stores. Instead, Costco is telling customers it purposely chooses to use the generic "holiday" verbiage. You know, they stock holiday gifts, not Christmas gifts.

Last week, a customer wrote to Costco and asked this direct question – "Does Costco use the word 'Christmas' in your store advertising or on any signs anywhere in your stores during the Christmas season? That's a pretty simple question, yes or no."

Kory Rosacrans, staff manager for Costco replied, "I guess the answer would be No."

Costco wants you to do your "Christmas" shopping with them, while refusing to recognize that Christmas even exists. I betcha they believe in Santa - as they take your money.

Symposium sheds light on bank security issues

ATMs are an increasing target for thieves, said attendees and speakers at the 2008 ADT Financial Security Symposium held last month in Florida.

The Latest from SIWSymposium sheds light on bank security issues

In late November, the FBI released bank crime numbers for the second quarter of 2008. In that time period, banks faced more than 1,400 robberies. The numbers were down, according to FBI Criminal Investigative Division Assistant Director Kenneth W. Kaiser, but he said "the propensity for violence during bank crimes remains a concern."

In 58 of those incidents (from a total of 1,443 incidents tracked by the FBI during that quarter), violence was involved. That included assaults, hostage situations and even deaths, noted Kaiser.
It was exactly that kind of criminal problem that brought members of many U.S. banks together for the 2008 ADT Financial Security Symposium in West Palm Beach, Fla., from Nov. 18-20.

Representatives from both enormous banks (Bank of America, for instance) and regional banks (Bank of Tampa, for example) met in the same room, hashed out common problems and tried to anticipate their future challenges. They sat in on lectures, networked over coffees, and even formed table-size workgroups to speculate on how to deal with select incidents. They talked budgets and buy-outs which precipitated from the economic recession and murmured between themselves about how that would affect security spending.

Speakers included representatives of the FBI, Postal Service, ADT technology whizzes, a workplace violence consultant, public safety specialists and others. Around the room and available for browsing during breaks were some of the emerging technologies for preventing criminal incidents. On table-tops, attendees could inspect top-notch video surveillance systems, sophisticated access control programs and even systems that would block credit card and ATM card skimming. ("Skimming" is the process of getting a card-holder to present their card and sometimes PIN to a fraudulent card reader which captures the card and access PIN information.)

In regards to the FBI statistics, these security leaders were here because financial crimes are a big problem. Just in that second quarter of 2008, robberies meant the loss of approximately $12.5 million according to the FBI's numbers. In the same quarter, monies recovered from bank robberies totaled only $1.7 million.

One of the common problems security directors said they were facing were instances of ATM thefts.

Read more about these problems at: http://www.securityinfowatch.com/online/Financial/Symposium-sheds-light-on-bank-security-issues/18954SIW339