Association/Trade Show Update

The National Automated Clearing House Association (NACHA) is undertaking two new projects designed to provide financial institutions and merchants with educational resources on managing risk and preventing fraud associated with Internet-initiated payments.

"Managing risk and preventing fraud are both major concerns to organizations doing business on the Internet," said David L. Merritt, chairman of the Internet Council and vice president and product design manager in the New Business Development Group of Mellon Global Cash Management. "Through these projects, the Internet Council will assist organizations in identifying the types of risk and fraud that pose threats to their businesses, and in adopting methods to mitigate them."

A "Fraud 101" project will identify and catalog the various types of Internet payments fraud such as transaction-level fraud, theft, invalid accounts, and non-sufficient funds. The project will produce a white paper that provides guidance for preventing, detecting, and addressing fraudulent activity.

A risk management project will focus on the risks of specific Internet-initiated payment types such as automated clearing house (ACH), credit card, online debit card, offline debit card, and person-to-person payments. Categories of risk include credit, operational, fraud, systemic and reputation risk. The project participants will author an industry publication that provides guidance on managing the risks of Internet-initiated payments.

Both the fraud and risk management projects will begin in January 2002 and are scheduled to be completed by mid-2002. Additional information on Internet Council projects and membership is available at https://internetcouncil.nacha.org.

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The Mortgage Bankers Association of America's Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization (MISMO) has re-elected ALLTEL to its governance committee.

MISMO was formed in late 1999 to establish eXtensible Markup Language (XML) data interchange standards for the mortgage industry. MISMO plans to publish version 2.1 of the XML data standards it has developed during the first quarter of 2001. ALLTEL and many other mortgage industry participants have already implemented MISMO standards.

Approximately 100 industry organizations are helping establish data interchange standards. Subgroups work throughout the year via conference calls, e-mails and attend group meetings three times per year, according to Craig Foote, vice president of product strategy for ALLTEL Information Services. Foote represents ALLTEL on the MBA governance committee.

"ALLTEL has always been a strong supporter of both banking and mortgage data standards," Foote said. "XML standards will streamline the efficiency of business processes, especially when used in conjunction with other new technologies to create Web services. One difference between XML and previous standards is that XML can be implemented much more inexpensively and pervasively than enterprise-scale standards. XML also separates content from presentation, which enables more complete integration with a wider variety of mortgage industry business partners, regardless of the device through which it is delivered."

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White House cybersecurity czar Richard Clarke will headline the list of speakers at the RSA Conference 2002, the world's largest data security conference and expo, which is scheduled for Feb. 18-22, 2002 at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, Calif. Clarke will explore cybersecurity's role in public policy and incident management.

Attended by more than 10,000 people in 2001, the conference is recognized as the premier e-security and cryptography gathering. RSA Conference 2002 will kick off with a special presentation by Jim Bidzos, conference chairman and vice chairman of RSA Security, and will feature additional keynote presentations from industry leaders and national policy makers, including representatives from Microsoft, Nortel Networks, VeriSign, Compaq Computer and Symantec.

Attendees can participate in more than 200 individual breakout sessions on topics ranging from the most current implementations of enterprise security and secure electronic commerce to the latest in cutting-edge cryptographic research. The complete catalog of sessions, featuring a wide variety of workshops, seminars and talks, can be found at www.rsaconference.com.