HTML Tags: Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) uses tags such as <h1> and </h1> to structure text into headings, paragraphs, lists, hypertext links, etc. These tags in HTML documents give commands that direct the size, shape, coloring and placement of text, graphics and sound on the web page, as well as integrating the static page with dynamic content such as Java applets.

"It appears that the decision-makers are increasingly coming from the IT areas. Whether this is due to market conditions...or just a phase, the development and deployment of a software development kit with the origination product is a key component of the product offering and it is critical to the sale. We have learned the early adopters of innovative technology have more challenges and experience a greater percentage of failure relative to vendors that wait for the technology to stabilize." --Craig Bechtle, senior vice president of product development with MortgageFlex Systems Inc., Jacksonville, Fla.

Senate Committee Postpones Vote on Internet Tax Moratorium
Sorohan, Mike
The Senate Commerce Committee abruptly pulled a bill under consideration last week that would make permanent the moratorium on Internet access taxes and on multiple or discriminatory taxes on electronic commerce.

Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, announced during a Sept. 27 markup session that S. 1453, the Internet Tax Freedom Extension Act of 2007, had been pulled from the agenda and would be considered at a future session. The announcement drew groans from committee members who supported the bill.

S. 1453, introduced by Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., with four co-sponsors, would extend the moratorium on taxes on Internet access and multiple and discriminatory taxes on electronic commerce imposed by the Internet Tax Freedom Act.

The bill has support from the Bush Administration. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez last week called for passage of S. 1453. In a joint statement, Paulson and Guiterrez said preventing the taxation of Internet access would “sustain an environment for innovation, ensure that consumers continue to have affordable access to the Internet, especially high-speed Internet and strengthen the foundations of electronic commerce as a vital and growing part of our economy.”

"The Internet is an innovative force that opens up the vast potential economic and social benefits of electronic commerce,” Paulson and Guiterrez wrote in a letter to senators. "Congress has an opportunity to demonstrate bipartisan leadership by passing essential legislation before the current moratorium expires on November 1 of this year. We urge the Congress to expedite passage of a permanent extension so that President Bush can sign it into law before the current moratorium expires.”

But Inouye has hinted that partisan bickering has held up the bill going forward. “I remain hopeful that pragmatism, and not politics, will prevail and that my colleagues can agree upon reasonable legislation that can be marked-up next week, and thereafter, sent to the President’s desk,” he said.

The committee is also expected to consider a permanent extension of the national “Do Not Call” Registry. S. 2096, the Do-Not-Call Improvement Act of 2007, would eliminate the five year automatic removal of telephone numbers registered in the federal “Do-Not-Call” registry.

“The federal ‘Do-Not-Call’ registry is a tool used by millions of people who do not want to constantly receive unwanted telemarketing calls,” said Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, a co-sponsor. “Consumers should not have to mark their calendars every five years to remind them to re-register their numbers on the ‘Do-Not-Call’ list.”

According to bill supporters, each number in the Do-Not-Call registry will expire five years after its initial registration. Nearly 52 million numbers will expire before September 30, 2008.
(Back To Top)


Companies See Value of Knowledge Management
Palaparty, Vijay
U.S. companies will spend $73 billion on knowledge management software this year, according to a report from Boston-based AMR Research. And those companies expect to increase that spending by an additional 16 percent in 2008.

Companies seek to improve process efficiency, customer satisfaction and market agility through KM technology investments, said Jim Murphy, research director at AMR Research, who co-authored the report, The Knowledge Management Spending Report.

“Seventy-three billion is a large amount that represents an even bigger opportunity for software vendors and providers,” Murphy said. “Enterprises are looking for content management, search, portal and collaboration technologies that will enable innovation. This wide range of needs unmet by existing systems leaves ample room for software and service providers.”

Content management, search, portal and collaboration are components of KM, which is defined as a company’s prioritization and investment in technologies relating to their customer management software and business processes. Each category includes several sub-components that relate to customer management such as customer service and e-learning.

Content and document management systems ensure the quality and integrity of a company’s information, Murphy said. Navigation, search and retrieval aspects are programs that aggregate and extract information from disparate structured, unstructured, internal and external sources. Portal and portal frameworks are platforms and gathering points for KM initiatives. KM collaboration allows people to coordinate and conduct work together.

More than 50 percent of the companies surveyed—350 total, of which 200 were U.S.-based, 72 from Germany and 78 from the United Kingdom—said they plan on investing in KM for their company as a whole versus only for a specific portion. Sixty-five percent of U.S.-based companies and 52 percent of European companies said they plan to spend for their entire company versus solely for a division or unit. In 2008, 66 percent of all companies expect to increase spending over 2007—67 percent of companies in the U.S. and 64 percent in Europe.

The anticipated 16 percent growth in the U.S., from $73 billion to $85 billion, will be spent predominantly on hardware or application infrastructure ($21.2 billion) and KM software licenses ($20.3 billion). Another $15.7 billion will be spent on software maintenance, $13 billion on employees and $14.7 billion on third-party services.

Half of respondents cited increased process efficiency as the primary business process priority and motive in the next year, both in the U.S. and Europe. Forty-one percent desire to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, 39 percent seek growth and agility, 23 percent are looking for more innovation, 19 percent seek to consolidate and 16 percent would like to address future workforce issues such as retirement and training.

“Knowledge management also is useful in employee management. As the baby boomer generation is nearing retirement, capturing and organizing more comprehensive information would help transition new employees into areas that are highly specialized,” Murphy said.

Customer service and customer retention surfaced as primary concerns for companies, along with information worker productivity and KM. Fifty-seven percentsaid customer service and support is the most important business issue and 54 percent said information worker productivity and KM is most important.

“Knowledge management is also a company’s ability to retain and exploit the knowledge and expertise of its employment,” Murphy said. “There’s a ‘people side’ to it as well. As companies take initiatives to globalize business and collaborate with partners worldwide, knowledge management does not stop at integrating data and processes. It has to involve people-based knowledge, data and processes—both internally and externally. Companies need to extend themselves to manage more of their information to appeal to a broad audience. Knowledge management is not only about enterprise resource planning—companies have to be able to make better accommodations for aspects like richer client experience and accommodation for information that is both structured and unstructured.”

Current offshoring and outsourcing practices are also part of the knowledge management equation. A recent report from Houston-based TPI, Knowledge Process Offshoring: A Balanced View of An Emerging Market, highlighted the difference between knowledge process offshoring and business process offshoring. KPO differs from BPO and information technology offshoring in that it involves analysis and insight based on skills, experience and judgment.

KPO processes are performed based on domain knowledge and intellectual capacity rather than driven by a set of rules—the main driver for BPO. Interpretation, analytical skills and reasoning set KPO apart from BPO and ITO. Most often, for KPO, higher education and a specialized and differentiated set of knowledge and skills are required, TPI said.

However, companies need to account for how to manage both knowledge and business processes and are trying to find ways to create modules. Organizing the knowledge aspect is the challenging part for companies, both onshore and offshore, Murphy said—finding ways to capture the knowledge processes and use them for communication and collaboration. The international component of this aspect creates even more strategy.

“Knowledge data should not be translated to code that is shared across boundaries. It is structured information but should also be organized in a way that the reasoning as to why someone did something a certain way is noted—not just the result or outcome, but the process. The thinking aspect is not always recorded and could result in reinventing the wheel—driving down a company’s efficiency—perhaps even a faulty wheel,” Murphy said.
(Back To Top)


Banks Doing More to Stop Online Fraud
Palaparty, Vijay
Financial industries continue to face the brunt of online fraud. Threats will only increase, but banks should concurrently increase efforts in monitoring, detecting, authenticating and alerting to protect their customers, according to panelists at a recent webinar sponsored by Dallas-based Entrust.

“The end of 2003 and 2004 saw the emergence of phishing attacks,” said George Tubin, research director of financial information and security and delivery channels at Needham, Mass.-based TowerGroup. “It caught the industry unprepared—but the losses were not that large then. What it did was add a new element to fight in security.”

Low anti-virus and anti-spyware software usage by consumers exacerbated the problem. In many cases, even if they did have software to ward off threats, they were not updated.

“Consumers view banks as a protector not only of their finances, but their information as well,” Tubin said. “It is an important factor in doing business. But criminals are getting more creative and the message here is that usernames and passwords will be stolen—that’s the bottom line. How to keep online transactions secure is the concern.”

Regulation efforts countering online fraud worldwide have emerged as well. In the U.S., the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council prescribed guidance on stronger authentication. However, there is no clear sense of where recommendations were used within financial institutions, Tubin said.

At present, 95 percent of U.S. banks are compliant or are close to being compliant with FFIEC authentication. Eighty percent are fully compliant while 10 percent are awaiting approval. Five percent are in the process of correcting issues in preparation for compliance.

“The available authentication solutions currently available are not all equal” Tubin said. “However, the important factor is to help the consumer and to answer the question: what authentication process can we put out in front of the customer for a safer online environment?”

Currently, online security measures among banks include using device IDs for security, used by 70 percent of banks. A device ID is a low-cost option which provides a changing passcode for access on a remote key. IP geolocation is used by 20 percent of banks and involves tracking internet protocol addresses for verification. OTP tokens—one-time password tokens—are used by 30 percent of banks. Each session requires a new password or an additional password to offer an extra layer of security.

Site-to-user-verification, which involves using images for consumer verification, is used by 50 percent of the banks. Sometimes fraudulent web sites take the place of real web sites with images help consumers know they are on the authenticated bank website based on the image. Challenge questions are also used as backup in the event of a first layer security failure. Seventy-five percent of banks currently use challenge questions—answers to which only the account holder would know. Back-end fraud detection, however, has a long progression ahead—only 20 percent have focused efforts for monitoring

“Customers need layers, many layers, and banks have to link those to provide a more secure environment for customers,” Tubin said.

Single-platform security systems that integrate into back-end systems are optimal for banks, panelists said. As customers update their information, various sources of information are updated. Additionally, the single-platform system is able to become more familiar with all aspects of transactions—creating more data for better monitoring of activity.

To improve security measures, in-session monitoring provides immediate review and could potentially recognize any fraudulent activity. Similarly, back-end fraud detection links analysis of consumer account activity and behavior. It would be able to detect anomalies in activity—such as sudden funds transfers or large withdrawals. Out-of-band authentication and fraud alerts could also help make online transactions more secure.

Eric Skinner, chief technology office at Entrust, said products and services to increase security include evaluating fraud capture, data control, adapting to new fraud patterns and monitoring. He said banks should assess these factors while considering changing their current security practices and processes.
(Back To Top)

Data Context Blurs Reasons for Racial Disparities
Murray, Michael
When the Federal Reserve began analyzing Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data, the results stoked debate on both sides of the issue. Consumer groups jumped on findings that higher-cost loans tended to go to minorities in a discriminatory pattern, while