|
|
|
|
Virtually all banks have legacy computer systems installed and changing these systems to offer contemporary products and services is both expensive and inconvenient. The Bankstar Systems interface to many legacy system allowing banks to offer state-of-the-art products and services without any change in the legacy systems. The
Bankstar Systems allows connectivity between Intra-Bank or Inter-Bank
distributed databases. Banking In the early 1980's the banking environment moved from Centralized Databases to Distributed Databases and, in recent years, back again to Centralized Databases. Many banks now have a number of systems running which are not fully integrated. One of the major challenges banks face today to provide contemporary products and services to their customers is connectivity, be it Inter-Bank or Intra-Bank. Intra-Bank connectivity is provided relatively easily by banks having centralized databases and having branches located areas having a stable communication infrastructure. For Banks having distributed databases this is a major challenge and Inter-Bank connectivity is even a larger challenge. The Bankstar Systems have taken this challenge and, having established connectivity, allow Banks to offer a variety of state-of-the-art products and services to their customers as well as promptly meet statutory reporting requirements. Security
One of the major concerns in conducting
transactions over the Internet are Security concerns which need to be
addressed very carefully. The concerns are:
Either Testkeys or PKI (Public Key Encryption which is Asymmetrical Encryption) ensure the above. In addition to the security features listed above, a feature worth having is :
The Bankstar Systems allow users to select one or more of the following security features which can be used for different types of transactions based on a banks risk perception for different transactions.
Technical In 1996, when usage of the Internet was beginning its explosive growth, we had a vision that just as the PC would reduce processing costs for banks in the 1980's and 1990's, the Internet would reduce processing costs for banks to such an extent that banking transactions which could not take place in the past, would take place.At the same time we realized that risk perceptions and budgets varied from bank to bank hence we started development of a Financial Object Library based on Object Oriented Programming. Our library would use the TCP/IP protocol allowing banks to select an appropriate communication medium from the Internet, Leased Lines, Dial-Up lines, VSAT's etc., that is to say any communication medium which supported the TCP/IP Protocol. In 1997 two events took place which would not only make our vision a reality, but would make it secure, cost effective and scalable with a low implementation cost. Microsoft announced MARBLE / MIFST which would provide the technical components required for Internet based financial services and on May 20, 1997, Microsoft demonstrated a 45 node cluster running SQL Server 6.5 and MTS 1.0 which performed a billion DebitCredit transactions. This simulated a network of 160 million clients submitting transactions at a rate of 14 thousand transactions per second. Traditional logic held that if a bank had a very high volume of transactions it would choose high or medium end hardware platforms, if it had low volumes it would opt for lower end hardware platforms. Similar logic held that if branches of banks had to be networked, domestically or across international boundaries, they could only be networked using high or medium end hardware platforms. We have proven this to be wrong and today our software is being used by Central and Commercial banks over a wide range of hardware and communication configurations. Our software is already database independent and the next generation of our libraries which are under development are going to take us to platform independence. |
Authentication: To verify the identity of an individual