Bank technology

Centier Bank in Whiting, Ind., is giving its customers access to an online database of community services.

Verizon has upgraded its user authentication service with an ambitious goal in mind: to be the steward of consumers' online identity, the gateway to every site with which a consumer engages.

These financially underserved individuals are far from disconnected. They are actually more active users of mobile phones and social media than the population at large.

Microsoft announced new hybrid cloud products this week. Banks have long taken to this mixed approach, in which they can keep sensitive data within their walls.

Lifetime Achievement honoree Ellen Alemany notes how the industry has evolved since the start of her career. Alemany, the recently retired head of RBS Citizens Financial Group, accepted the award at an American Banker gala celebrating the industry’s most powerful women.

Banks are notably absent from the list of top payments innovators these days. Instead, the freshest ideas are coming from start-ups and companies like American Express and PayPal, which each recently unveiled new technologies that pose threats to the established order.

So far, banks have skirted many data privacy issues faced by Walmart, the NSA and others. But as they make broader and deeper use of customer data, privacy problems emerge.

Former Citigroup chairman and CEO Sandy Weill has backed the personal financial management software startup.

Biometric identity verification firm DigitalPersona has acquired Identity Stream, a software provider that offers banks a one-touch authentication system for transactions.

Hundreds of financial institutions will practice fending off cyber-attacks in simulations this month sponsored by SWACHA and the Financial Services — Information Sharing and Analysis Center.

Cyberthreats continue to multiple like Tribbles and corporate account takeovers keep bank security executives up at night. But on the bright side, banks are getting better at sharing threat information with merchants.

As the world accelerates toward faster and contactless payments, the U.S. has been reinforcing checks, avoiding global payments standards and pursuing closed-loop innovations that further isolate it.

A 25-year-old graphic designer (Chase Giunta) was stripped of his Twitter handle, @Chase, by JPMorgan Chase after re-tweeting vitriol aimed at the bank, according to the New York Post. The switch happened earlier this month.

Digital Reasoning, a BTN Top 10 Tech Company to Watch in 2012, has ten large banks using its software to uncover employees' nefarious activities.

Banks still using Microsoft's Windows XP operating system had better beware, the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council announced this week.

California has reformed its controversial Money Transmission Act. On Friday, the state's governor, Jerry Brown, signed a bill amending the 2010 law.

Guardian Analytics announced Tuesday that it's been maintaining a secure online forum for financial services companies looking to safeguard themselves against data breaches and distributed denial of service attacks.

JPMorgan Chase (JPM) has appointed corporate technology veteran Dana Deasy as chief information officer.

Over the past year, banks have been bombarded with cyberattacks of all kinds: distributed denial of service, phishing, malware, and wire transfer fraud, to name a few. Who’s attacking the banks and why? What defensive tactics are banks getting better at, and what work has yet to be done? This special report looks at how the cyberthreat landscape has changed.

DDoS attacks, ACH fraud, and account information theft are problems, but is it hyperbolic to talk about war — cyber war?