• 08.06.2021 -- 05:49 pm

Financial IT Interview with Alexey Zverev, Co-founder and Co-CEO at Exactpro

Exactpro is a leading independent provider of software testing services for mission-critical technology that underpins global financial markets. The firm is experienced with trading, clearing and settlement platforms, market surveillance systems, market data systems, collateral and risk management systems, and post trade infrastructures. Exactpro provides functional and non-functional testing services to exchanges, clearing houses, securities depositories, trade repositories, digital exchanges, central banks, brokers and investment banks worldwide. Headquartered in the UK, Exactpro employs over 630 members of staff. Learn more at exactpro.com.

Chris Lewis, Head of Solutions at Synectics Solutions

“Criminals will undoubtedly be targeting users of sites affected by the Fastly outage, particularly those offering a subscription service. If you recall TSB’s botched IT upgrade back in 2018, this caused a surge in phishing attacks across the finance industry with a 10,000% uptick in the weeks after their IT failure.  

"Giants like Amazon and Spotify will have significant security processes in place to protect themselves and their customers, so my concerns lie with smaller organisations who offer subscription services and whose customer data may not be subject to similarly robust security measures. Here, the onus is on those companies to contact their customers with a reminder of security best practice and how to spot phishing attacks while also preparing internally for any potential attack, which in my view should be expected as a guaranteed outcome. Additionally, the importance and value of disaster recovery services to ensure a rapid return to action while preventing substantial data loss cannot be underestimated.  

"Within banking there is a mega-trend towards operational resilience to prevent losses from inadequate or failed internal processes, people and systems or from external events. This means ensuring that banking institutions have – amongst other policies and processes - resilient ICT systems that are subject to regularly tested protection, detection, response and recovery programs and that they convey relevant and timely information that enable risk management and decision-making processes to fully support and facilitate critical operations. However, banks can be as robust as possible but if there are weaknesses in other areas of the ecosystem, their strength is diminished.”

Tassat Group Inc., a global provider of financial technologies and products for digital payments, today announced the appointment of David Koch as Managing Director, Sales & Business Development. As Tassat continues its aggressive growth, Koch will lead the Company’s overall sales and distribution strategy to seize market opportunity and meet growing client demand. He will report to Chief Executive Officer, Ron Totaro.

Koch brings over 20 years of experience driving revenue across payments and commercial banking. His expertise spans blockchain payments, open banking and APIs, digital payments, ERP connectivity, real-time payments, and automation of the customer onboarding process. Koch joins Tassat from Ninth Wave Inc., where he served as Head of Strategic Accounts. He previously spent 10 years at Mastercard in various roles, ultimately serving as Vice President, Member Relations. Throughout his career he has held executive roles including Chief Commercial Officer at FISPAN, Director at CGI’s payment IP group, Vice President for Business Development at Earthport and Vice President for Marketing & Business Development at Promereo.

“B2B payments are a $23 trillion market that has yet to benefit from meaningful digital transformation, which presents immense opportunity for banks. When banks join TassatPay® Network, they’ll solve the problems their commercial customers experience with antiquated payment rails. We’re thrilled to welcome David to our team to support our market leadership in the space and ensure a seamless, efficient journey for our customers,” said Ron Totaro, Tassat CEO. “Our growing executive team is a testament to Tassat’s unwavering commitment to delivering blockchain-based real-time payments to the banking industry. David’s in-depth industry knowledge and extensive experience bringing payments technology to market is the perfect fit to help drive Tassat into its next growth phase.”

“Tassat is uniquely positioned to lead the banking industry to B2B digital payments because of its blockchain technology expertise and its track record running a high-volume B2B payments platform. I’ve long admired Tassat’s technology and forward-looking vision, and I’m excited to bring my decades of expertise to enable banks to bring the full complement of digital payments capability to their commercial customers,” said David Koch. “I look forward to driving rapid business growth as the company enters a burgeoning market.”

SEON, the fraud fighters, today announces its partnership with IDVerifact, the advanced digital identity solution. Last year it was reported that nearly half of companies experienced a fraud in the past 24 months. Recognising the increasing surge in fraud and digital identity theft, IDVerifact sought to strengthen their capabilities by partnering with SEON to extend its comprehensive suite of solutions. 

IDVerifact removes the challenges associated with a traditional approach to onboarding, maintaining and optimising multiple digital identity partners. It achieves this with a complete suite of continually evolving digital identity solutions, allowing organisations to rapidly capture the data attributes required to complete trusted business transactions with their clients. As part of the deal, IDVerifact will integrate SEON’s cloud-based machine learning platform, Intelligence Tool, into the IDVerifact platform to provide inputs for user profiling decisions on transactions, all in real-time.  

Built for data enrichment, SEON’s Intelligence Tool scans open-source databases and gathers extra information about users based on an email address, phone number or IP address. In addition, it enables users to simply check if an email address is valid or not and instantly get background information to create a complete user profile, flag fraudsters, confirm suspicions or remove doubts.  

George Colwell, Sr. Vice President at IDVerifact, commented: “The issue we are seeing is that fraudulent activity is only increasing, yet there is no one size fits all standardised method for digital identity. But, no matter who you are or where you’re transacting, it should be secure. That’s why we developed a one stop shop for digital identity solutions, enabling customers to choose from a menu of data attributes that uniquely suit their organisation. We believe that SEON is an ideal partner to support us in reaching our goals.  

He added: “Not only was it a meeting of minds when it comes to approach and our complimentary offerings, but the team at SEON also understand that there is no space for standing still so we all must continually evolve. We know that as our partners grow, so too will we.”  

Tamas Kadar, CEO and Co-Founder at SEON, said: “By integrating SEON’s Intelligence Tool, IDVerifact has assembled a next-level toolbox for fraud protection, including digital identity verification, compliance, risk assessment, data capture, tokenisation and encryption. Together we are helping organisations to create safe environments to conduct transactions at the speed of today’s business.” 

To learn more about SEON and the services it provides, visit: https://seon.io/   

 QuantaVerse, which uses AI and machine learning to automate financial crime identification and investigations, is offering HRER Fast Start to banks interested in cutting costs and improving the accuracy and consistency of their high-risk entity review program. In no more than 60 days,* QuantaVerse can launch HRER and return the first month of QuantaVerse High-Risk Entity Reports.

The QuantaVerse High-Risk Entity Report documents risk discovered by the QuantaVerse Financial Crime Investigation Platform. The platform automates the research work required to accurately assess entity risk, such as adverse media, jurisdiction, transactional relationships, and typologies that indicate potential money laundering. QuantaVerse offers HRER Fast Start so customers can quickly realize the benefits associated with automating this area of their AML process.

In just two months, QuantaVerse High-Risk Entity Reports can be launched in an institution and begin returning reports that cut HRER costs while improving the accuracy and consistency of their high-risk entity efforts. There are five steps to improving HRER outcomes for AML/BSA teams with QuantaVerse:

• Configure bank-specific risk settings (jurisdiction, line of business, etc.)
• Review bank file formats and build mapping if necessary
• Accept secure file transfers of high-risk entities and relevant KYC data
• Run analytics and produce reports
• Return monthly HRER reports for each analyzed entity

“The new HRER Fast Start makes it easy for banks to improve the accuracy and consistency of their high-risk entity review program,” explained David McLaughlin, CEO and Founder of QuantaVerse. “QuantaVerse HRERs make the entity review process more efficient while getting complete analysis with fewer errors.”

The manual nature of high-risk reviews make them a time-consuming cost sink for AML/BSA teams. Human investigators manually sift through customer data and a multitude of disparate databases, then conduct research on the web in an attempt to accurately evaluate customer risk. The process is especially laborious when evaluating highly active customers, but even dormant or declining accounts deemed high-risk demand regular attention. In addition to being costly, the HRER effort demands the attention of more experienced and higher-compensated members of AML/BSA teams.

CCOs and AML/BSA leaders using the QuantaVerse Automated Investigation solution have experienced first-hand how the QuantaVerse platform and Financial Crime Investigation Reports (FCIRs) were streamlining and creating consistency across their alert investigations. With some modifications, they recognized that QuantaVerse FCIRs could also make their HRER efforts more efficient.

One QuantaVerse customer conducting approximately 1,200 high risk entity reports each year was averaging 10 hours on each high-risk review. Leveraging QuantaVerse, the average time required for HRERs was reduced to three hours per investigation. Not only did automating HRER investigations cut 60% of the time allocated to high-risk entity reporting, but it also improved accuracy and enabled experienced investigators to be deployed to their highest and best use in the organization.

To learn how to improve HRER efforts and demonstrate that your organization is employing the innovations that regulators and FinCEN are expecting, please visit: https://quantaverse.net/try-ai/#HRER.

Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX), the world’s digital infrastructure company™, today announced a strategic collaboration with GNX — a global provider of managed underlay and WAN networks — to bring bespoke connectivity solutions to Equinix’s enterprise clients in its International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data center HH1 in Hamburg. GNX is now an official Reseller Partner within the Equinix Partner Program. 

Companies deploying at HH1 and utilizing interconnection services such as Equinix Fabric™ and Network Edge, can now access over 4,000 carriers and Internet service providers (ISPs) through GNX, thus benefiting from enhanced connectivity at the digital edge. 

By leveraging Equinix Fabric in combination with GNX’s managed first- and last-mile services, customers are able to access the entire global Equinix ecosystem of nearly 10,000 customers, including more than 1,800 networks and 2,950+ cloud and IT service providers. This enables companies to deploy their digital infrastructure effectively, with secure access to their own infrastructure, customers, ecosystem, and clouds, across regions. 

According to the Equinix 2020-21 Global Tech Trends Survey, IT leaders in Germany are working to digitize their IT infrastructure, with 78% of respondents citing this as a priority of their organization’s technology strategy. In addition, 69% are focused on improving network optimization and moving their infrastructure to the digital edge – both of which are supported by this new partnership.

With the newly increased number of carrier network providers available in the Equinix Hamburg IBX, customers can now optimize their networks based on price, quality of service and service offering, and integrate the Equinix interconnected ecosystem in their global WAN. 

Highlights/Key Facts

• As a major European industrial and trade hub, Hamburg is home to a growing technology community, including many e-commerce companies which require low latency, increased bandwidth and connectivity to industry-leading networking and cloud services providers. Equinix’s growing presence in the metro further supports the city’s position as a leading German digital hub: The Smart City Index by Bitkom measures major German cities in terms of digitization, and Hamburg achieves top scores in all areas examined. 

• Opened in 2019, HH1 is Equinix’s first data center in Hamburg—the company’s fourth metro in Germany. HH1 enables Equinix customers to evolve from traditional businesses to "digital businesses" whereby they can interconnect with thousands of customers, locations, clouds and service providers, through one of the largest global interconnection ecosystems.  

• HH1 provides access to Platform Equinix®, including Equinix Fabric, allowing customers to leverage interconnection services at the digital edge. Enterprises and service providers use Equinix Fabric as a single interconnection approach to connect between all their physical and virtual devices within Equinix IBXs and the world's largest digital infrastructure ecosystem. This includes connecting physical devices located within Equinix colocation, and automated bare metal servers available with Equinix Metal™, with virtual devices such as routers, firewalls and SD-WAN gateways available on Network Edge. This helps enterprises to seamlessly bridge the distance between their distributed digital infrastructure for future-proofed business success.

• GNX is carrier-neutral and provides first- and last-mile connectivity, in addition to integrating with any SDWAN, SASE or traditional network WAN, GNX delivers this full suite within a single contract, providing customers with a single point of contact from provisioning to pro-active 24x7 support. 

Quotes

• Jens-Peter Feidner, Managing Director, Germany, Equinix:

“Through this new collaboration with GNX, we are further enhancing connectivity options for our customers in Hamburg. Enterprises benefit from the numerous carrier network providers now available, enabling our customers to leverage a neutral connectivity network combined with Equinix’s interconnection services such as Equinix Fabric. This partnership further underlines Hamburg’s growing importance as a digital hub, and one of Germany’s leading digital capitals.” 

• Jan-Willem Meijer, CCO, the Netherlands, GNX:

“Supporting businesses that need a more agile, flexible and global approach to connectivity, GNX provides a unique, carrier-neutral model that enables clients to source solutions that best fit their requirements. We help to extend the Equinix ecosystem, including Equinix Fabric and cloud integration capabilities, to the customer premise using private or public connectivity options. This partnership has enabled us to offer access to the global Equinix ecosystem through our carrier-neutral connectivity, reducing the hassle of multi-vendor, multi-contract environments for our customers.”

• Rutger Bevaart, CEO, the Netherlands, GNX:

“I'm very excited about the new possibilities we can offer together with Equinix in the Hamburg HH1 IBX. Through our partnership with Equinix, customers of the HH1 IBX gain access to over 4,000 global carriers and ISPs. Our next-generation approach to global connectivity brings together these carriers into our LARA platform, simplifying the sourcing of connectivity by being a virtual extension of our customers’ global network teams.”

Valterra Partners LLC (“Valterra”), and fifteenfortyseven Critical Systems Realty LLC (“1547 CSR”), a leading owner, developer, and operator of data centers, have partnered together to acquire ColoHouse, a global colocation, cloud, and managed services provider headquartered in Miami, Florida. The transaction also includes the acquisition of the former Green House Data colocation facility in Orangeburg, New York. Following the acquisition, the combined company will have a footprint of more than 14 locations in eight different countries across the globe and will continue to be led by the current CEO of ColoHouse, Paul Bint and a team of industry leading sales, operations and M&A executives.

“For the last 10 years, ColoHouse has grown exponentially by prioritizing customers’ business needs and meeting market demands. Our reputation for impeccable customer support paired with a competitive service offering and a robust network, have been key drivers of the company’s continued success,” comments Paul Bint, CEO of ColoHouse. “Working together with Valterra and 1547 CSR will help significantly increase the brand awareness of ColoHouse in the marketplace and will provide the necessary scale and capital to add new sites to the portfolio and expand the company’s geographic reach.”

Drew Reid, Managing Partner of Valterra Partners, adds: “ColoHouse’s expertise in delivering colocation, cloud and managed services combined with 1547 CSR’s data center development, site selection and infrastructure management expertise will create a truly unique platform with the ability to expand into new locations across the country and across the globe. We look forward to working with Paul and the 1547 CSR team to expand the ColoHouse portfolio and service offering over the coming years.”

The combined company will remain focused on organic growth through delivering state-of-the-art colocation facilities, services and support to meet the evolving needs of customers but will also seek accretive M&A opportunities to expand the footprint and service offerings.

To learn more about this latest acquisition please visit, www.1547realty.com, www.valterrapartners.com and www.colohouse.com.

Mark Hendry, Director of Data Protection and Cyber Security at global legal business, DWF, comments on the Fastly outage the online presence of major organisations.

"The online presence of major organisations in the economy have been disrupted by a technical issue experienced by a commonly used service provider, Fastly. Amazon, Reddit. Bloomberg, The Financial Times, The New York Times, CNN, The Guardian, The Independent, The Spectator and UK Government are all reportedly affected, with websites being inaccessible to many users.

"Fastly provide content delivery network ("CDN") services to companies. The intention of CDNs is to route (or distribute) internet traffic and services through 'nodes' in order to balance the load of traffic, prevent bottlenecks and result in high availability and faster content delivery.  Requests for content are directed by an algorithm, for instance the algorithm might direct the traffic so that it routes through the most available or highest performing node, or so that the traffic takes the fastest network route to the requestor.  This is the reason that some internet users are reporting no issues with accessing content that is unavailable to others – for instance individuals from Berlin are reporting via Twitter that they can access website content that users in London cannot access.

"Fastly have not yet provided comment on the precise nature of the problem.  Some of the affected organisations have apparently sought to rectify the issue, perhaps by reverting to non-CDN schemes of distribution, however if this is the case users of those websites can expect for their experience to be slower than normal until the CDN can be restored.

"Whilst the outage can be considered an availability of services issue, it is not clear at this time whether any underlying data or infrastructure belonging to the affected organisations has become vulnerable as a result of the issue."

CDC Group, the UK's development finance institution (DFI) and impact investor, today announces a new US$50 million risk-sharing facility with Absa Bank Limited (Absa). The commitment increases Absa's capacity to offer financing solutions to Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) and households across Sub-Saharan Africa through Microfinance Institutions & Non-Bank Financial Institutions (MFI & NBFIs). 

This MFI and NBFI risk sharing facility is the first of its kind for CDC – supporting lending to these institutions (through credit risk mitigation) and allowing them to better serve households and MSMEs across Africa. The facility will enable Absa to deploy significant sums of capital and provide vital assistance to businesses and households in need of finance, helping them remain resilient and emerge from the crisis. Moreover, the investment forms part of CDC's COVID-19 response and boosts systemic liquidity at a critical time when commercial lending is limited due to the economic challenges brought on by the pandemic.

This investment bolsters Absa's strategy to promote responsible lending practices among MFIs & NBFIs in its portfolio and highlights opportunities within the financial inclusion segment – sending a positive signal to commercial banks to increase their lending to this segment of the economy where considerable funding needs remain unmet.

CDC has a long relationship with Absa, Sub-Saharan Africa's third-largest bank, and this latest investment reinforces the partnership between both institutions. This facility builds on the existing trade finance partnership, helping to enhance access to funds in the markets, facilitate increased trading of goods and services, and deepen financial inclusion among underserved communities and individuals across Africa's markets.

Stephen Priestley, Managing Director, Head of Financial Services, at CDC Group, said: "We are thrilled to once again partner with Absa.  This is CDC’s first risk-sharing facility that provides a local currency solution to MSMEs and local households. We are confident that CDC’s counter-cyclical funding will provide much needed support to local financial institutions by diversifying their funding base and enhancing their ability to provide smaller loans to local businesses and hard-to-reach communities. CDC remains committed to ensuring that businesses and people have greater access to the financial support needed to enable them to grow and remain resilient throughout the crisis."

Anand Naidoo, Managing Executive: Client Coverage, Absa Corporate and Investment Banking said: “We are proud to have built this partnership with CDC, which does not only bring value to the relationship but is also aligned to our overall business strategy. This facility is another proof point in the execution of our shared growth strategy which focuses on providing finance and assisting clients to achieve sustainable economic growth in the markets where we operate. 

“The framework details the use of proceeds, the process for project evaluation and selection, the ongoing management of proceeds as well as the reporting and transparency. There is a definite trend from global investors to invest in more socially responsible projects and companies because they want to see that their funds are being invested in activities that promote sustainable economic growth.”