Headlines:
Outsourcer COCC Details '05 Contracts Vendor: Phishing Attacks Harder to Spot EDS, Spanish Not-for-Profit Extend Pact
Outsourcer COCC Details '05 Contracts
The cooperatively owned Avon, Conn., outsourcer COCC said it signed 12 contracts this year to provide core processing and 44 to provide branch image-capturing, anti-laundering, document-imaging, and other services.
COCC, the ninth-largest provider of core processing technology, said last week that its new customers are community banks in New England, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and credit unions in New England.
Several of the customers replaced their in-house processing systems with COCC's outsourced service.
"New security threats, regulatory pressure, the need to keep technology up-to-date, and a continuing drive for operating efficiency are driving many institutions toward the outsource model," Steve Kayser, a senior vice president at the cooperative, which once was known as Connecticut On-Line Computer Center Inc., said in a press release.
COCC, which primarily serves New England institutions, said the 12 branch-capture contracts it signed this year raised its monthly check processing volume to over 9 million.
The cooperative predicted demand to continue to increase in 2006 for its anti-money laundering service, due to growing regulatory pressure on banks to monitor patterns of customer transactions and to report suspicious activity.
Vendor: Phishing Attacks Harder to Spot
Phishers and hackers are becoming harder to detect, the New York security vendor MessageLabs Ltd. says.
That's because cybercriminals are focusing their attacks on smaller groups of victims and are using smaller, harder-to-detect tools, Mark Sunner, the chief technology officer at MessageLabs, said before it released its annual report on Internet security last week.
To distribute their scam e-mails, phishers often use networks of computers that have been taken over by viruses and hacking, and those networks are being scaled down to make them harder to detect, Mr. Sunner said.
The networks of compromised computers that send the e-mails "will stay alive longer, and this will definitely have the result of people receiving more spam," he said.
These tactics will become even more refined and harder to detect in the year ahead, he said. "The bad-guy community seems to have really mastered this."
EDS, Spanish Not-for-Profit Extend Pact
Electronic Data Systems Corp. of Plano, Tex., has extended and expanded its deal to provide services for Caja de Ahorros y Pensiones de Barcelona, the Spanish not-for-profit financial services company that uses the brand La Caixa.
EDS said the four-year extension, which it announced last week, would generate $236 million of revenue. The vendor said it will develop banking and insurance software for La Caixa, which has nearly 4,800 branches in Spain, and will manage its call center, among other things.
La Caixa has been an EDS customer since 1996.
