SOME BANKS
SAY,
“NO MORE
LIPSTICK FOR
THE PIG”
The coolest tools for
customers’ iPhones
Some advice on
launching the CFPB
Page 30
OCTOBER 2010
TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION. BUSINESS RESULTS.
VOL. 23 NO. 10
Phishing
Tackle
SECURITY
Industry tech groups
team up to offer trusted
e-mail registry service
THE FS-ISAC AND BITS ARE AMP-
ing up their fight against
phishing, hiring eCert for
a pilot program to bring
anti-phishing tools to mem-
ber institutions. The plan is
ambitious, but some experts
question whether the meth-
ods proposed are effective.
In October, eCert will
launch the Trusted Email
Registry, a program aimed at
protecting consumers against
spear phishing and e-mail-
based malware attacks. The
60-day pilot will start with
25 financial institutions, says
Paul Smocer, president of
the FSTC. A BITS working
group in 2007 recommended
that its members adopt TLS
(transport layer security), SPF
(sender policy framework)
and DKIM (domain keys iden-
tified mail), which the eCert
program will accomplish.
eCert has partnerships
with Google and Yahoo that
allow it to monitor 40 percent
of all e-mail traffic in the U.S.,
and to see how much of the
e-mail traffic is sent purport-
Leading Off, page 11
ACT Getting mortgage lenders back on track has become a tech balancing act, with originations, defaults and regulators all clamoring for attention. Balancing
Banks Return
To Revenue-
Generating IT
DEVELOPMENT
Outsourcers say the first wave of spending on
M&A integration and regulation compliance has
passed, with strategic projects now in the pipeline
COVER STORY PAGE 18
NOBODY LOVES MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS, OR CHANGES IN REG
ulatory requirements more than those tech vendors that find
ways to make money from them, but that wave of IT spending
is waning as IT development outsourcers report that U.S. banks
are beginning to move from defense to offense, with spending
shifting to more strategic projects like modern-architecture de-
posit systems that can plug into an aging core, or new credit
card platforms that give more flexibility in product rollout.
“Since of the beginning of this year we’ve started seeing dis-
cretionary spend pick up in pockets—nowhere close to where it
was in the past—but pockets where certain projects were con-
sidered very important from a revenue generation standpoint,”
Shifting Gears, page 25
BankSimple’s Niche Pitch
Despite partnering hiccups, start-up’s fans clamor for low-key approach
ONLINE BANKING
BY THE
NUMBERS
THE IDEA OF A LOW-FRILLS, LOW-
fee online bank with populist
mission statement—Don’t
Suck—has captured the
imagination of more than
20,000 people who have pre-
registered to be BankSimple
customers when the startup
opens its online doors. Now
all founder Joshua Reich
needs is a bank partner with
the technological savvy to
support his vision.
Good News,
Bad News
29 of North American
banks say their core system is real
time, 23% say theirs is dated and
uncompetitive.
