• 26.09.2016 -- 09:29 pm

Financial IT speaks with Pamela Pecs Cytron, Founder & CEO of Pendo Systems about its enhanced Pendo Data Platform (PDP).

EastNets, a leading global provider of compliance, payment and cloud solutions for the financial services industry, will unveil its advanced systems for countering money laundering and terrorist financing at the 2016 SWIFT International Banking Operations Seminar (Sibos), the latest edition of the world’s premier financial services event. The company will highlight its partnership with Dow Jones, the world's most trusted business news and financial information resource, to provide stronger Watch List Filtering for optimal protection.

Running from September 26 to 29, 2016 at the Palexpo convention center in Geneva, Switzerland, this year’s Sibos will gather some 8,000 business leaders, decision makers and specialists and nearly 200 exhibitors to build networks, share business strategies and consolidate expertise to shape the future of the financial industry. EastNets will occupy Stand F91 of the venue where it will demonstrate its leading anti-money laundering (AML) solutions and share key partnerships it has made with Dow Jones, and the European Business Reliance Centre EBRC

EastNets and Dow Jones recently agreed to combine the strengths of the former’s en.SafeWatch Filtering – a watch list and US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) filtering solution used by financial institutions and corporates worldwide – and the latter’s Dow Jones Risk and Compliance databases.  EastNets clients can now choose from targeted categories from the Dow Jones lists for loading into the en.SafeWatch Filtering system. This ensures that the system scans only against the targeted entities, thus boosting efficiency while minimizing false positives.

EastNets and the European Business Reliance Centre (EBRC) have entered into a partnership in order to launch a new Payments service. The Payments service is established through a Financial Messaging Hub (FMH), which is built around Eastnets’ Payments, Compliance and Cloud solutions, together with EBRC’s trusted Luxembourg Data Center providing Cloud and Managed Services. The service offers automation of payments’ workflows, integrated AML and Reporting services, with infrastructures connected to the SWIFT network. FMH is operated and managed by EBRC, with SWIFT connectivity assured via the EastNets SWIFT Certified Service Bureau as a trusted service in the Cloud.

Hazem Mulhim, CEO, EastNets, said: “An underlying theme across all our solutions is to lower the total cost of ownership, safer business, and flexible and enhanced performance. Through the years Sibos has served as an excellent platform for EastNets to demonstrate how our open platform and architecture offers the best protection against money laundering and unintentional involvement in terrorist financing, among other rapidly growing threats to the global financial system.   As one of the world’s most important financial centres, Switzerland is a fitting venue for us to emphasize the need for greater balance between security and performance as financial institutions contend with today’s challenging market realities.”

The annual Sibos conference is organized and facilitated by SWIFT, the global provider of secure financial messaging services. Complete event details are available at https://www.sibos.com.

 Path Solutions, a leading provider of Islamic banking software solutions, today announced the successful upgrade of the iMAL*ProfitCalculationSystem in Java version 14 at BankIslami Pakistan Limited (“BankIslami”).

Syed Ata Hussain, Head of Information System, BankIslami, said, "I am very proud of the level of professionalism Path Solutions has shown during the upgrade. Armed with a solid implementation methodology and supported by a team of skilled and passionate consultants, Path Solutions was able to fulfill its commitment, and we were able to run the first successful PCS in Java version 14 in Pakistan. We consider this implementation as a major milestone, as the course of the project involved exhaustive upgrade, internal testing phases, multiple UAT cycles and three full scale application testing exercises to ensure uninterrupted business operations following the upgrade. Once again, Path Solutions was up to the challenge and we upgraded successfully owing to the tireless efforts of all teams involved”. 

BankIslami was the first bank to receive Islamic banking license under the Islamic Banking Policy of 2003 of SBP.  It started its operations on April 7, 2006. It is a leading Islamic bank in Pakistan with nationwide network of 317 branches in 93 cities offering a full range of Sharia-compliant financial products.

This PCS upgrade was pivotal for BankIslami especially after its merger last year with KASB Bank (in which more than 100 branches of KASB were migrated to iMAL Islamic Banking & Investment System), considering that BankIslami needed several modifications in order to broaden its operations spectrum to ensure compliance with Central Bank regulations.

The latest iMAL*ProfitCalculationSystem module is a Web-based application and can be implemented either on Oracle or Sybase RDBMS. It supports all main browsers in the market (IE11+, Firefox3.6+, and Chrome) and may be deployed on any JEE Web/Application Server Apache Tomcat, Oracle WebLogic, etc.

The module incorporates:

·         Built-in control procedures and compliance with Islamic Sharia

·         Built-in limits monitoring and exposure control

·         Extensive credit risk measurement and evaluation

·         Extensive reporting tools

·         Pool management control function which allows high flexibility in fund and risk management

·         High parametric features can be set solely for a portfolio of investments and deposits segregated by currencies, investments and deposit account type or even account periodicity

·         Various calculation methods, while other business and functional features are all parametric

·         Guaranteed accuracy, operational efficiency, effective pool control with a large variety of preset calculation criteria based on parametric options.

Path Solutions’ latest PCS Java version will ensure a remarkable improvement in performance and will fulfill all BankIslami’s regulatory requirements.

Earlier this year, Path Solutions announced the release of the latest version of the multi-award winning Islamic core banking system, iMAL, which provides users with a modern and updated interface, as well as the addition of several new modules to keep pace with changing legislation and evolving market needs.

Path Solutions consistently ranks first in IBS Islamic Sales League Table, a barometer for Islamic core banking systems sales activity. Besides, since the company’s launch 25 years ago, over 100 Islamic financial institutions have selected itsiMAL system.

IHS Markit (Nasdaq: INFO), a world leader in critical information, analytics and solutions, today announced an agreement with AITEC and the Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA) to strategically strengthen its Know Your Third Party (KY3P) platform. The relationship brings together KY3P’s private cloud, one-to-many platform, with the AITEC-AIMA Illustrative Questionnaire for Due Diligence of Vendor Cyber Security.

The new questionnaire available on KY3P enables AITEC and AIMA member firms to centralise their approach for vendor outreach and establish a workflow and governance process to promote timelier, efficient and quality responses. Member firms also have the flexibility to add their own supplemental questions for vendor response.

“With over 250 members at firms representing $2 trillion AUM, AITEC is a community that understands the importance and value of information exchange,” said Maura Harris, director of Business Development and Operations at AITEC. “Accordingly, we are thrilled to extend the AITEC-AIMA DDQ to IHS Markit. This relationship will further develop efficiencies in vendor due diligence by allowing AITEC and AIMA members to systematically capture and evaluate critical vendor information on a consistent and timely basis.”

“AIMA is delighted that, as a result of this agreement with IHS Markit, the distribution of the AITEC-AIMA cyber security vendor due diligence questionnaire will be extended to our members who use the KY3P platform,” said Jack Inglis, CEO of AIMA. “This questionnaire is so important because it will enable alternative investment managers to approach technology vendors with a consistent set of questions, consequently providing efficiencies in communication and ultimately increasing our sector’s understanding of technology infrastructure.”

“KY3P brings technological innovation and operational excellence in support of the highest market standards, including those developed by AITEC and AIMA,” said Gina Ghent, managing director and head of KY3P at IHS Markit. “The asset management community has raised the bar with their leadership in publishing the AITEC-AIMA DDQ. With KY3P’s award winning technology underpinning this DDQ, we have addressed and met the dynamic and ongoing needs of the market to manage the exchange of critical information.”

The AITEC-AIMA due diligence questionnaire is available to members only.

For more information on KY3P and the AITEC-AIMA questionnaire, please register at http://events.markit.com/AITEC_AIMAwebcast for our webcast on October 11th 2016 at 10:00am EDT/3:00pm BST.

TechCanary, a provider of a cloud-based, analytics-driven insurance solution and the #1 insurance solution inside the Salesforce CRM platform,  announced its client  A-Affordable Insurance Agency, Inc., the largest volume auto insurance agency in Massachusetts, has achieved positive ROI after just four months in production with the TechCanary Insurance Platform. Early benefits range from improved efficiencies to increased revenues through enhanced risk decision making practices.

A-Affordable is a high transaction volume agency processing over 12,000 personal auto payments per month, as well as thousands of phone calls daily. Given the high production needs, efficiency is especially key to the operation. While A-Affordable had a traditional agency management system in use, it failed to meet the agency’s needs for flexibility and end-to-end process automation. Looking to support its high volume, 105 users, and terabytes of historical data, A-Affordable went in search of a solution that could address all of its agency management needs, but also offered advanced levels of automation including integration with email, electronic signature, accounting, and phone systems.

Conducting an extensive market evaluation of available offerings, A-Affordable chose the TechCanary cloud-based, analytics-driven Salesforce CRM-based platform because it was the only option that could deliver the “ideal system”, as A-Affordable’s CEO and President, Mark Winiker refers to it.

After investing approximately 90 days defining A-Affordable’s unique requirements and migrating and validating data from thousands of policies, it then took only a few days to go live with all 105 users. A-Affordable managed its own internal training, but A-Affordable’s COO, Jason Boggs noted that, “the system is so tuned to the agency’s processing and so intuitive that it requires virtually no training, even for new employees.”

“When I first met with TechCanary they asked me what the perfect solution would look like? I gave them my wish list and can honestly say that’s what they delivered. Traditional agency management systems just don’t stack up and aren’t designed to address the broader needs of today’s agencies,” commented A-Affordable’s Winiker. “We chose the TechCanary platform first to address our efficiency pain, but what has turned out to be a huge bonus and of even greater value are the analytics capabilities it offers. In the past we would spend the bulk of our time and energy just trying to keep up with our high volume of work. With TechCanary, productivity is no longer a concern, allowing us to focus on how we bring in more revenue and make better risk and pricing decisions. The abilities to create custom fields, processes, and analytics that are included with the TechCanary platform make that aspect of our operation that much more efficient and effective as well.”

Winiker continued, “We now have the ability to measure productivity and performance by a variety of criteria, such as conversion ratio or length of time spent on specific tasks. As a result, we’ve hired a sales trainer who is focusing on helping us to further refine our sales approach and process.”

Highlights of capabilities the TechCanary productivity platform is enabling at A-Affordable include:

• All functionality expected in an agency management system;
• Robust customer relationship management (CRM) with SalesForce included as a native part of the system, with no integration required;
• Full integration with phone and email, ensuring digital, written and oral communications are automatically part of an account’s record;
• Seamless integration of DocuSign’s electronic signature;
• Robust and targeted email marketing;
• Deep analytics capabilities;
• Automation of business processes from website leads, quotes, follow ups, renewals, and more; and
• Ability for A-Affordable to modify all aspects of the system including, but not limited to, screens, fields, email templates, dashboards, reports, automation and workflows.

“It has been a tremendous pleasure to work with Mark and Jason to witness the A-Affordable operation evolve to a modern, highly efficient and well-oiled machine. A-Affordable recognized the potential of our technology and knew there had to be a better option than the old school agency management systems,” said Reid Holzworth, TechCanary founder and CEO. “We appreciate that they had confidence in our solution and young company to partner with us on this project, and we look forward to continuing to work closely with the A-Affordable team to assist them to derive even greater value.”

TechCanary’s Insurance Platform is a cloud-based, analytics driven solution, well-suited for agencies, brokerages, MGAs, GAs, wholesalers and carriers. Built inside the world's #1 CRM platform Salesforce, the TechCanary solution offers a complete ACORD data structure, support for all lines of business in P&C, life, health and benefits, integration with both email and phone, and all browsers and mobile devices. The platform enables efficient management of the entire insurance sales and service process from lead to sale to ongoing customer support, including renewal. Robust out of the box real-time analytics is included along with fully user-configurable automation and workflows. TechCanary clients can choose from over 3,000 add-on pre-integrated Apps, enabling easy expansion of capabilities and quick-to-value deployment. Included with the TechCanary platform is a Salesforce license. TechCanary professional services are also available for setup, data migration, deployment, configuration assistance, and ongoing support.

While 82 percent of respondents believe the IT security industry is making progress against cyber attacks, those gains are undercut by egregious security practices in critical areas such as privileged account security, third-party vendor access and cloud, according to results from a new global survey commissioned and released by CyberArk .

The 10^th annual CyberArk Global Advanced Threat Landscape Survey 2016, themed “Cyber Security: Past, Present & Future,” examines whether global enterprises are learning and applying lessons from high-profile cyber attacks, and how security priorities and business decision-making are being influenced.

Cyber Lip Service? Bad Security Habits Persist, Despite Rising Awareness
Headline-making cyber attacks have driven significant increases in cyber security awareness. However, the failure to turn increased awareness into the enforcement of security best practices undermines progress for organizations’ cyber security efforts.

• Seventy-nine (79) percent state their organization has learned lessons from major cyber attacks and has taken appropriate action to improve security.
  • Sixty-seven (67) percent now believe their CEO/board of directors provide sound cyber security leadership (up from 57 percent in 2015).
  • The top actions taken because of this awareness are deployment of malware detection (25 percent), endpoint security (24 percent) and security analytics (16 percent).
• Fifty-five (55) percent of respondents state their organization has changed or evolved processes for managing privileged accounts.
  • Despite this, 40 percent of organizations still store privileged and admin passwords in a Word document or spreadsheet, while 28 percent use a shared server or USB stick.
• Nearly half of organizations (49 percent) allow third-party vendors (such as supply chain and IT management firms) remote access to their internal networks.
  • While the majority of respondents secure and monitor that access, the public sector has the least third-party vendor access controls in place compared to other industries, with 21 percent not securing and 33 percent not monitoring that activity.

A Cyber State-of-Mind: Striking a Balance Between Fear and Overconfidence
Organizations are increasingly adopting a post-breach mindset, preparing to deal with ongoing cyber attacks and activity in the case of a breach. This preparedness is leading to positive steps in post-breach planning, but concerns exist about how overconfidence may affect the ability to protect against cyber attacks.

• Three out of four IT decision makers now believe they can prevent attackers from breaking into their internal network – up from 44 percent in 2015.
  • Despite this, 36 percent believe a cyber attacker is currently on their network, or has been in the last 12 months.
  • Forty-six (46) percent believe their organization was a victim of a ransomware attack in the past two years.
• Eighty-two (82) percent of respondents believe the security industry in general is making progress against cyber attacks.
  • Seventeen (17) percent believe the industry is falling further behind.
• Nearly every organization (95 percent) has a cybersecurity emergency response plan.
  • This preparedness is undermined by a lack of communication and testing – only 45 percent communicate and regularly test their plan with all IT staff.
• Sixty-eight (68) percent of organizations cite losing customer data as one of their biggest concerns following a cyber attack.
  • Sixty (60) percent of those who use the cloud store customer data in it.
  • Fifty-seven (57) percent who store information in the cloud are not completely confident in their cloud provider’s ability to protect their data.
• When identifying the most difficult stage of a cyber attack to mitigate, malware installation ranked first (41 percent), followed by privileged account takeover (25 percent).

On the Radar: Future Risks Emerge
As cyber attacks continue on trusted institutions such as government, utilities and financial systems, respondents identify what types of cyber attacks or tactics are most concerning. Respondents also share which cyber attack scenarios they think represent the most immediate and potentially catastrophic threat in general.

• Respondents list the following types of cyber attacks or tactics as the top-ranked concern in the next 12 months: Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks (19 percent), phishing (14 percent), ransomware (13 percent), privileged account exploitation (12 percent) and perimeter breaches (12 percent).
• Attacks on financial systems, including disruption of global markets (58 percent) is the most potentially catastrophic threat perceived by respondents, followed by attacks causing massive utilities damage (55 percent) and those impacting civil services such as healthcare and hospital services (51 percent).

The Impact of a Breach on Customer Data and Corporate Accountability
The survey found a varied global picture in terms of preparedness for increased regulatory oversight and the impact on cyber security programs and accountability.

• While 70 percent of global respondents agree that the threat of legal action and fines influence the level of executive/board involvement in security-related decisions, 22 percent of the respondents do not incorporate compliance fines or legal fees (19 percent) into the cost of a breach.
• Nearly seven in ten (69 percent) respondents state that, in response to a breach or cyber attack, stopping the breach/removing the attackers is among their top priorities, followed by detecting the source of the breach (53 percent).
  • Far fewer respondents prioritize notifying the CEO/board (26 percent), entire staff/workforce (25 percent) or customers (18 percent).

“The findings of this year’s Global Advanced Threat Landscape Survey demonstrate that cyber security awareness doesn’t always equate to being secure. Organizations undermine their own efforts by failing to enforce well-known security best practices around potential vulnerabilities associated with privileged accounts, third-party vendor access and data stored in the cloud,” said John Worrall, CMO, CyberArk. “There’s a fine line between preparedness and overconfidence. The majority of cyber attacks are a result of poor security hygiene – organizations can’t lose sight of the broader security picture while trying to secure against the threat du jour.”

• White Papers
• 22.09.2016 08:19 am

Banks and financial institutions are seized with newer forms of threats to the safety and security of their data, a critical asset for any organization. In the age of Internet of Things, criminal activities and data theft have also gotten smarter and savvier, with criminals increasingly using technology to break technological barriers within the banking system. In light of the low entry barriers to cybersecurity attacks in banks, it is incumbent upon them to invest in systems and technologies that go beyond merely pre-empting an attack.

This White Paper explores:

• The genesis of cybercrime in India.
•  How it’s only grown over the recent years, especially 2011 onwards.
• How increasing reliance on technology makes it harder to detect and monitor financial crime taking place online.
• Recommends a few solutions that banks can and should invest in if they want their financial assets to stay safe and secure.

 smartTrade Technologies, a multi-asset electronic trading solutions pioneer, announces today the launch of smartAnalytics, a cross-asset big data analytics solution.

With smartAnalytics, financial firms will achieve a greater control and transparency by leveraging our cutting edge solution to store, analyse and visualise all the data flowing through their trading infrastructure.  Data is stored in a secure high performance, fully hosted and managed environment. smartAnalytics enables users to easily generate graphical reports and analysis on demand. The solution gives a 360 degrees view of their data and covers multiple reporting requirements including regulation and compliance such as Mifid II, risk, Transaction Cost Analysis (TCA), performance analysis and much more.

The smartAnalytics open architecture allows to easily export and share information with other teams - traders, sales and quants - or departments - compliance and risk. Users can leverage pre-defined reports or simply create their own by using powerful modelling tools. smartAnalytics fully integrates and complements the reporting capabilities of LiquidityFX and smartFI, smartTrade’s FX and Fixed Income trading platforms.

“We have invested heavily in our infrastructure to allow our clients to enter in the big data, analytics and machine learning space which we believe will become prevalent in the industry.” says David Vincent, CEO of smartTrade Technologies. “Having the tools to analyse the massive amounts of data produced in the financial markets can help our clients spot patterns and correlations in their trading and improve their execution efficiency” he added.