Headlines:
Fair Isaac Software Gets New Interface Vericept Gets Equity Investment from Visa Bank in South Africa Using Security Tags
Fair Isaac Software Gets New Interface
Fair Isaac Corp. of Minneapolis has introduced an interface that makes it easier for bankers to use its popular Blaze Advisor rules management software.
Blaze Advisor is used to automate complex decision-making processes that are based on satisfying various conditions. For example, a bank might provide certain incentives for customers who open accounts - offering an MP3 player for funding the account with a pre-determined amount, or a pen for depositing less money.
Fair Isaac's Capstone Decision Accelerator, introduced last week, incorporates a browser-based, user-friendly interface that makes it easier to implement these policies.
"Rule sets can be entered in plain English, rather than code," said Roger Ahern, a vice president of business management at Fair Isaac. "Prior to having a product like this, most business users would have to write their requirements down on paper, give that to the IT department, and the IT department would have to code the system."
Two to three banks will begin using the product this year, Mr. Ahern said.
Decision Accelerator is the first of a series of products Fair Isaac plans to release to help financial services companies automate the process of designing and enforcing bank policies.
Fair Isaac will release products next year to address application processing, data interface, and analytics procedures.
Vericept Gets Equity Investment from Visa
Visa International has made an equity investment in Vericept Corp. and entered a two-year partnership with the Englewood, Colo., Internet security vendor.
Vericept's software monitors and analyzes data traffic on a corporate network, including Web activity, e-mail, chat, instant messaging, and other communications, to protect corporate information and enforce data-security policies.
Sarah Perry, a senior vice president at Visa International Strategic Ventures, said in the vendor's press release last week, "Vericept's solutions satisfy a real market need, not only in the payments industry but across many industries."
Vericept said its Series C funding round raised $16.3 million from current and new investors, including the San Francisco credit card association. It did not say how much it got from each investor.
Brett A. Schklar, Vericept's senior director of product and marketing, said in an interview last week that more than 600 companies use its software to monitor 1.2 million employee workstations.
Bank in South Africa Using Security Tags
ActivCard Corp. said Wednesday that First National Bank, a Johannesburg division of FirstRand Bank Ltd., is using its two-factor authentication system for online banking customers.
The Fremont, Calif., vendor's system uses tags that are typically small enough to be attached to a keychain. The tags, which generate random passwords for each online banking session, are given to customers and synchronized with a bank's systems.
The customer cannot sign on to the bank's online banking site without inputting information from the tag.
This adds a second level of security to the more common practice of using a username and password.
Online scams, especially phishing, have become increasingly sophisticated and often attempt to trick consumers into revealing their online banking passwords.
Some computer viruses use keylogger applications that monitor a user's activity, often looking for passwords that are then transmitted to a criminal.
