Published
- 02:00 am
Today Mastercard announced it has signed an agreement to acquire NuData Security, an advanced technology company that assists businesses in preventing online and mobile fraud using session and biometric indicators.
The Internet of Things is creating a more digitally-driven and digitally-connected world, with an estimated 50 billion smart devices to be in use across the globe by 2020. While such connectivity can create unparalleled convenience for consumers to pay how they want, when they want, it remains critically important to keep all transactions secure.
Mastercard will build on its commitment to drive greater protection in the digital space, integrating NuData to its already robust suite of fraud management and security products. The acquisition will also strengthen its efforts around device-level security and authentication, enabling near real-time collaboration between issuers, merchants and processors.
“Securing all payments today and tomorrow remains a top priority for Mastercard,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security for Mastercard. “The addition of NuData will build on our layered security strategy to safeguard each and every transaction across the globe. The combination of session and biometric information will provide even richer context around potential cyber and device-specific threats, enabling us to deliver even greater trust and peace of mind.”
NuData’s flagship NuDetect product identifies authentic users from potential fraudsters based on their online, mobile app and smartphone interactions, flagging those that represent the highest risk. The technology assesses, scores and learns from each online or mobile transaction to enable merchants and issuers to make near real-time authorization decisions.
“We’re excited to join the Mastercard family,” said Michel Giasson, chief executive officer, NuData. “For nearly a decade, we’ve worked to develop innovative solutions to help transform the way banks and merchants digitally interact with consumers. Those efforts will continue and accelerate through our collective enhanced capabilities to secure the digital landscape, while offering an enhanced user experience.”
- 09:00 am
Ripjar was founded in 2012 by engineers and data scientists from the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham. Ripjar’s next-generation Strategic Intelligence Platform (“Ripjar SI”) fuses deep learning technology, advanced analytics and global data collection to tackle some of the most difficult analytic problems for real-time threat intelligence, anti-money laundering and insider threat. The diversity of problems, scalability and usability of Ripjar technology in the enterprise sector uniquely sets a path for growth.
Tom Griffin, Ripjar CEO, said: “Thanks to the continued investment and support from Winton Ventures, Ripjar will be able to grow globally in 2017, where we will be investing in our vision to create the next generation of threat intelligence for the enterprise. Priorities will include expanding Ripjar’s global partner network and sales team, as well as creating a number of problem-centric applications that will build upon the foundations of Ripjar’s core platform.”
The changing threat landscape seen across both the security and compliance functions in the financial sector and the continuing struggle of competitive solutions that are unable to provide focused all-source threat intelligence provides Ripjar with an ideal opportunity for significant growth in 2017.
Anthony Daniell, Winton’s Vice Chairman, has agreed to become Ripjar’s Chairman. Anthony said “I am delighted to accept this appointment. I believe my extensive experience in the financial world will enable me to make a significant contribution to Ripjar. In the month or so since my appointment, it is already clear from multiple meetings with clients that Ripjar has world leading products.” Anthony Daniell started his career in the British Army before joining UBS and, in 2003 joined Winton.
Nick Saunders, Winton’s COO, commented: “We have been impressed by the quality and depth of the Ripjar team, and feel they have a product to really compete with the incumbents. Their Strategic Intelligence platform addresses a growing demand among compliance and information security practitioners to extract meaning from very large and diverse data sets.”
- 06:00 am
Today the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the premier post-trade market infrastructure for the global financial services industry, announced that its Omgeo Alert solution, a global repository for storing standing settlement instruction (SSI) data, has completed enhancements to become the industry’s single and centralized ‘SSI Utility.’
With 6.6 million settlement instructions as of year-end 2016, an increase of 15% over 2015, DTCC remains committed to driving the industry towards automating and replacing onerous, manual processes.
Last year, the industry’s SSI Utility also achieved another significant milestone with over one million FX and cash-based SSIs now held in ALERT, up 13.5% in 2016, with a compliance rating of more than 99%. DTCC also added support for collateral SSIs in ALERT, enabling investment managers and broker/dealers alike to create and maintain SSIs for collateral movements, and provide real-time enrichment of collateral SSIs in the DTCC-Euroclear Global Collateral Ltd.’s Margin Transit Utility (MTU) – a joint venture – as well as other third parties.
“In a short amount of time, ALERT has become the industry’s only SSI Utility – allowing a community of investment managers, broker/dealers and custodian banks to take advantage of multiple benefits,” said Paula Arthus, Managing Director and Head of Omgeo and Data Services at DTCC. “These include ensuring the complete automated communication of account and settlement instructions, lowering costs and streamlining trade processing, taking advantage of DTCC’s expanded asset class coverage and, more importantly, increasing data quality by establishing levels of firm authorization.”
Looking ahead, DTCC expects to sign-up several more firms for its Omgeo ALERT Global Custodian Direct (GC Direct) feature in 2017 – adding to Brown Brothers Harriman and J.P. Morgan, plus several prime brokers. Working with the community, DTCC also intends to build on the more than 32 buy-side clients already leveraging its flagship ALERT Automating SSIs Together (ASSIsT) program, a relatively new initiative to fully embed ALERT into the account onboarding process by providing a solution for non-ALERT investment manager counterparties.
Almost 7% of the ALERT database is now being managed through the automated GC Direct process. GC Direct links the custodian’s SSI database to ALERT via ISO 20022 XML messaging and the process ensures all data is 100% compliant with the industry rules. Joe Liguori, Managing Director and Securities Operations Strategic Initiatives Lead at J.P. Morgan, confirmed they are seeing strong interest: “Buy-side clients love the idea of the custodian managing the SSI data for them. The custodian knows the data best, so it makes sense that we manage the population of this data to the industry’s SSI Utility on their behalf. Data can then be consumed and used by their counterparties.”
“The utility approach to SSI data management delivers significant efficiency and risk reduction to a broad range of market participants including both the buy- and sell-side,” said Bill Meenaghan, Executive Director of DTCC’s Omgeo ALERT. “As we gear up for the transition to a T+2 settlement cycle in the U.S. and the implementation of MiFID II in Europe we would expect greater numbers of firms to delegate the automated management of SSI data and to continue to add to the more than 25,000 legal entity identifiers (LEIs) already in our database, which will lead to more efficient trade matching and lower fail rates.”
- 06:00 am
SCHAEFER GmbH, a world leading provider premium quality elevator components, is pleased with the 5700% faster performance delivered by its next generation IT infrastructure comprising Infortrend storage systems and Intel server boards. The SCHAEFER team is now able to process 20% more orders, with 85% less power consumption and 70% smaller system footprint demands.
The outdated IT infrastructure was too complicated and costly to manage and sometimes made the SCHAEFER staff wait up to 30 minutes to proceed from one step to the next. To resolve these inefficiencies and migrate to Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization, SCHAEFER conducted extensive surveys and careful evaluations and selected Infortrend storage systems with SSDs for their excellent performance, simple management, and high availability.
To their full satisfaction, SCHAEFER's new IT system was up and running in just two weeks, including the system deployment and configuration, data migration, and transition from VMware to Hyper-V 2016. Now, SCHAEFER's primary storage, an Infortrend all-flash system (EonStor DS 4024B with Intel SSDs), provides 13,000MB/s throughput performance for their critical applications, while the backup system, Infortrend EonStor DS 3048, supports high capacity storage with 48 bays for HDDs.
"As a technology leader, we consciously selected an IT frontrunner. That's extremely important for us as our subsidiaries and offices, for example in Asia and North America, work in different time zones," said Michael Gubisch, CEO, SCHAEFER. "As IT forms the heart of our company, SCHAEFER can now work with greater speed, precision and efficiency. The new IT system also reduces our maintenance and operating costs without compromising our data security," added Joachim Pfeifer, Project Lead, SCHAEFER.
"We opted for the installed Intel components and Infortrend storage systems because they enable us to offer our customers the latest server storage technology in a budget-optimized manner," said Alexander Fuchs at Next Generation Solutions, SCHAEFER's external partner supporting their IT related matters.
Teddy Lin, General Manager of Infortrend Europe commented, "Infortrend is happy to play an important part in SCHAEFER's success and will strive to work with Intel or any other vendors to keep perfecting our solutions for customers."
- 02:00 am
Today WatchGuard Technologies, a leader in providing advanced network security solutions, revealed the findings of its inaugural quarterly Internet Security Report, which explores the latest computer and network security threats affecting small to midsize businesses (SMBs) and distributed enterprises. The report covers the top network and malware trends from Q4 2016, examines the most notable cyber security stories, details new research from the WatchGuard Threat Lab, and provides practical defense tips for security professionals. The findings in the report are based on anonymized Firebox Feed data from WatchGuard's active unified threat management (UTM) appliances worldwide.
"We're incredibly excited to introduce WatchGuard's Internet Security Report," said Corey Nachreiner, chief technology officer at WatchGuard Technologies. "Our Threat Lab has been monitoring the most prevalent security industry threats and trends for years and now with the addition of the Firebox Feed—anonymized threat analytics from Fireboxes deployed around the world—we have firsthand, acute insight into the evolution of cyber attacks and how threat actors are behaving. Each quarter, our report will marry new Firebox Feed data with original research and analysis of major information security events to reveal key threat trends and provide defense best practices."
With cyber attacks like the Mirai Botnet, the SWIFT banking attacks, and alleged Russian interference in the presidential election, cyber criminals were busy in 2016, and Q4 was no exception. Ransomware attempts through phishing emails and malicious websites dominated the headlines, banks and healthcare organizations were targeted by increasingly devastating attacks, and nation-states continued to target one another with sophisticated cyber attacks.
The insight trends, research and security tips discussed in WatchGuard's quarterly Internet Security Report are designed to help companies stay educated and vigilant in such a dynamic threat landscape. Here are the top five key findings from the report:
- Approximately 30 percent of malware was classified as new or "zero day" because it was not caught by a legacy antivirus (AV) solution. This confirms that cyber criminals' capability to automatically repack or morph their malware has outpaced the AV industry's ability to keep up with new signatures. Without an advanced threat prevention solution, which identifies malware proactively using modern detection techniques, companies would miss almost 1/3 of malware.
- Old threats become new again. First, macro-based malware is still very prevalent. Despite being an old trick, many spear-phishing attempts still include documents with malicious macros, and attackers have adapted their tricks to include Microsoft's new document format. Second, attackers still use malicious web shells to hijack web servers. PHP shells are alive and well, as nation-state attackers have been evolving this old attack technique with new obfuscation methods.
- JavaScript is a popular malware delivery and obfuscation mechanism. The Firebox Feed saw a rise in malicious JavaScript, both in email and over the web.
- Most network attacks target web services and browsers. 73 percent of the top attacks target web browsers in drive-by download attacks.
- The top network attack, Wscript.shell Remote Code Execution, almost entirely affected Germanyalone. Breaking it down country by country, that attack targeted Germany 99 percent of the time.
WatchGuard's Internet Security Report is based on anonymized data from more than 24,000 active WatchGuard UTM appliances worldwide. These appliances blocked more than 18.7 million malware variants in Q4, which averages to 758 variants per participating device. They also blocked more than 3 million network attacks in Q4, which averages to 123 attacks per participating device. The report includes a detailed breakdown of the quarter's top malware and attack trends, the top security incidents, and web and email attack trends. In response to the rapid spread of the Mirai botnet, the WatchGuard Threat Lab has also launched an ongoing research project that analyzes IoT devices for security flaws. The research highlighted in this report evaluated Wi-Fi cameras, fitness accessories and network-enabled novelty devices. This includes a deeper look at vulnerabilities the Threat Lab found in a relatively popular wireless IP camera and steps consumers should take to secure IoT devices they purchase.
- 09:00 am
Today Yirendai Ltd., a major online consumer finance marketplace in China, announced that it has entered into an agreement of intent with the Beijing branch of PICC Property and Casualty Company Limited, the biggest property and casualty insurance company in China.
Under the terms of the Agreement, PICC P&C will provide Yirendai with performance bond for certain loans facilitated through the Company's online marketplace. PICC P&C will reimburse lenders within the agreed scope should any losses incur due to the Company's failure to perform adequate due diligence during the credit underwriting process.
"We are pleased to begin working with PICC P&C on performance bond," said Ms. Yihan Fang, Chief Executive Officer of Yirendai. "We believe a strong alliance between our two industry-leading companies will enable us to provide higher quality products and services to our customers to better serve the large demand for personal finance."
- 07:00 am
iWedia, a leading provider of software solutions for TV devices to service operators and consumer electronics manufacturers, today announced that it is deploying its Linux-based Teatro-3.0 solution for IP-connected STB on the German HD+ retail market in a 4K Set-Top Box (STB) designed and manufactured by SmarDTV.
The announcement was made at TV Connect 2017, which is being held in London from Tuesday, March 28th through to Thursday, March 30th. iWedia exhibits at the show (ExCeL, stand B54) where it demonstrates the solution.
Teatro-3.0, a software solution for IP-connected STB, is based on Linux with a User Interface built in HTML5 which uses specific JavaScript APIs allowing access to digital TV features.
In the HD+ context, the solution has been ported on a dual-tuner UHD DVB-S/S2 STB from SmarDTV based on the Broadcom BCM7251 SoC. The software has been customized to fulfill the HD+ specifications and integrated with NAGRA GUARD Conditional Access System. Its architecture has received NAGRA NASC 3.0 Tier #4 certification.
The solution features comprehensive navigation tools (service list, zapping banner, flat and grid TV guides) as well as Personal Video Recorder and Time Shift (over a USB storage device). A picture browser and player is provided. Fast zapping is made possible thanks to the underlying full band capture and all digital tuning technologies: when the user changes channel, the transition is almost not noticeable. HbbTV apps are supported.
“With its software architecture recognized highly secure by third party experts, Teatro-3.0 is ideally suited for connected Pay TV STB running Linux,” said Sunghoon Kim, VP Sales at iWedia. “Moreover, it supports HTML5 for both the resident app and remote web services which allows for visually catchy UI,” he added. “We are very proud that German viewers may now enjoy this solution and we are preparing further deployments”.
- 07:00 am
Eagle Investment Systems LLC, a BNY Mellon company, has been selected by AIA Group in regards with AIA’s establishment of an Investment Book of Record (IBOR) and consolidation of the firm’s investment management data sources onto one platform. AIA will implement Eagle’s data management platform, inclusive of managed services, which will be deployed over Eagle ACCESS, a secure private cloud.
Hong Kong headquartered AIA is the largest independent publicly listed pan-Asian life insurance group with a presence in 18 markets across the Asia-Pacific region.
Mark Konyn, AIA Group Chief Investment Officer, said, “With the new platform we can improve operational efficiency and ensure greater data integrity as we scale our operations and deepen our front office analytics.”
“This is another milestone for Eagle in the region, AIA represents our first client in Hong Kong, joining a growing number of Asia-based firms using the Eagle platform,” said John Legrand, Managing Director for Eagle in EMEA and APAC. “We are seeing a growing demand for IBOR solutions as global investment firms seek to replace legacy platforms to manage investment risk, improve decision-making and ensure consistency in reporting. The flexibility of our solutions and our ability to scale to support growth, coupled with services delivered alongside our parent company BNY Mellon, ensures that we are well positioned to support our clients’ needs.”
The new architecture will provide AIA with a single consistent view of performance analytics, investment risk and compliance monitoring. The solution will also support the availability of consistent data for investment analysis and reporting.
Of the ten most recent new clients choosing the Eagle solution, eight of them relate to a need to support IBOR; with 25% from the APAC region.
- 09:00 am
Europeans could avoid paying up to £7 billion in financial charges every year thanks to digital innovation helping them better manage their finances, according to international money transfer company Azimo.
Of the 1,000 consumers surveyed in each country regarding their methods of personal financial management, the vast majority (86 per cent) believe new technologies will help them to avoid debt and unnecessary banking charges.
In fact, over half (53 per cent) of the respondents believe that innovative financial technology has helped them save up to £100 a year.
Interestingly, Germans prove the most dubious when it comes to fintech helping them manage their money better, with almost 1 in 5 (19 per cent) disagreeing with the clear majority of the respondents on the topic.
Spain take the crown when it comes to being the most digitally savvy at managing their money with just under 70 per cent (average across all countries surveyed is 57 per cent) of Spanish respondents opting for a mobile app as their technology of choice for managing their money.
“Thanks to technology, overcharging consumers when it comes to financial management is now a thing of the past,” says Michael Kent, Co-Founder and CEO of Azimo. “At Azimo, we’re focused on helping consumers better manage their money both domestically and internationally by giving them as frictionless an online transfer an experience as possible. This new data is proof that technology is continuing to change the world of finance for the better and although there’s still a way to go to fully digitise the industry, it’s great to see the impact and benefits to consumers’.
The leading reasons for these savings according to the respondents across all the four regions surveyed include:
1. The ability to move money instantly between accounts to avoid overdrafts and charges.
2. Having instant visibility of what they are spending, allowing them to act accordingly.
3. Managing direct debits and standing orders themselves.
In the UK, the key statistics included:
• 90 per cent of consumers use technology to manage their money.
• Most Brits opt to use a desktop web login to manage their money (65 per cent) with just over half (57 per cent) also using an app.
• 4 in 5 (86 per cent) believe that digital ways of managing money will save them from debts and charges.
• 40 per cent of UK consumers claim they have avoided up to £100 in debt or charges from using technology to manage their money.
• Just 6 per cent of Brits disagree that tech helps them to save them money.
- 07:00 am
Today ClauseMatch, major financial technology company that provides software-as-a-service platform for smart document management, announced the launch and global availability of its innovative online editor. London-based ClauseMatch, a successful 2014 graduate of the inaugural Barclays Accelerator programme, shall be working with Barclays to enable the bank to manage policies and standards in one place at a global level.
Tailored to the specific needs of financial institutions, ClauseMatch will provide banks with a single tool to increase visibility over documents and boost global team work, thus reducing costs and helping banks to adapt to new regulations. Moving away from a fragmented workflow by means of Word documents, PDFs and e-mails, replacing them with a single comprehensible solution has been an industry-known challenge. While consumers already widely embrace online collaboration tools as the easier and more efficient option, big businesses still struggle to untangle decades of legacy processes.
Until now, there has been no all-encompassing solution to streamline complex workflows, saving time and resources, removing human errors, uncovering hidden risks and providing better insight for senior management. When large and globally distributed teams within companies work on the same documents without a single solution, it can stifle the process, and further data extraction and dynamic searches inside the final documents can be limited. All of this can lead to risks and human errors. Through ClauseMatch, global teams within banks tasked with monitoring regulations and updating internal frameworks, policies and standards now have a single platform to manage the lifecycle of these documents.
"We are thrilled to be working with ClauseMatch and witnessing their progress after the Barclays Accelerator program," said Steven Burman, Global Head of Compliance Operations and Frameworks at Barclays. "Their platform will enable us to manage all of our global policies and standards more efficiently and effectively across the bank while providing the potential to link to other solutions easily through their API. In large complex organisations, document management can be challenging and so it is great that the industry is innovating to make things easier.
Fast-changing regulations, risk and compliance continue to challenge financial institutions in many ways. ClauseMatch addresses this by offering additional features that allow the connection between regulatory changes and internal policies for impact assessment and risk mitigation.
"We started ClauseMatch out of the frustration that we experienced in large financial institutions when working on complex documentation with many stakeholders. After a decade negotiating agreements, we wanted to find a new solution that could fix this broken and fragmented process, which seemed completely inefficient: sending multiple versions of documents to each other, storing comments and approvals in emails. It all led to a lack of transparency, inexistent audit trail and inaccessible content in documents. Management had no overview of issues and bottlenecks and regulators wanted to see deviations and approvals of non-standard terms, which had to be recorded manually," - ClauseMatch CEO and Founder Evgeny Likhoded comments. "We are excited to pioneer a real transformation in policy management processes, allowing banks to achieve their goals."
