FSTC and Object Management Group Collaborate to Simplify and Boost Security for Account Opening and Fund Transfer Transactions

Business Wire, June 11, 2007

NEW YORK & NEEDHAM, Mass. -- The Object Management Group[TM] (OMG[TM]), a not-for-profit computer industry standards consortium, and the Financial Services Technology Consortium (FSTC), a not-for-profit organization serving the financial services industry, today announced a joint project with Visa International that will help the industry identify ways to more efficiently and securely facilitate inter-enterprise business transactions.

This significant project is intended to help replace the inefficient, expensive legacy processes that are being used by the financial industry to facilitate the opening of new accounts and fund transfer transactions. Through the use of open standards, the project will enable financial institutions to uniformly improve the reliability, consistency and security of their transactions.

"When the financial industry originally built electronic processes, such as those associated with account opening and payments, the designers mimicked paper-based processes," said Dan Schutzer, Executive Director, FSTC. "It is time that we utilize 21st century technologies to overhaul and streamline, and secure these outdated information workflows. This project should go a long way in moving this forward."

As with other industry-driven open standards efforts, the project will be reliant on industry collaboration. OMG and FSTC are inviting financial and technology organizations to participate by identifying suitable process models that can be supported by, and interoperate with, a wide range of vendor solutions.

"Results from this project will be fed into an open, neutral, international standardization effort to agree automated, secure and optimal process integration within and across businesses," said Dr. Richard Mark Soley, Chairman and CEO of OMG. "There has always been and there will always be diversity in this space, and this joint project will identify opportunities to integrate in the face of (rather than replacing) that diversity."

One of the main drivers of the project is to ensure that sensitive customer information is better protected. Today, business processes for account opening and payments require the collection and transmission of sensitive digital data. This data is often shared and stored by trading partners, suppliers and clients, thereby making data on internal systems vulnerable to criminal exploitation and unauthorized access.

"Right now each data system is implemented differently from firm to firm, thereby increasing the risk that sensitive data will be lost or stolen," said Svetlana Sicular, Vice President of Global Data Standards, Visa International. "As a long-standing proponent of the data security issue, Visa was eager to work with OMG and FSTC to ensure that new industry processes be put in place to eliminate redundant data transmissions and minimize the amount of information that is moved externally between financial services institutions. At the same time Visa is looking for the project to find a way to eliminate the storage of sensitive data."

For More Information

To find out how you can join this project to collaboratively identify opportunities to improve security policy and control, and to create a new financial industry standard for inter-enterprise business transaction processes, please contact Dan Schutzer at dan.schutzer@fstc.org. The cost for joining the project is $1,000 for FSTC and OMG members. For non-members special arrangements can be made.

About Financial Services Technology Consortium

FSTC brings together diverse and often competitive financial institutions, industry services providers, government agencies and others to collaborate and find solutions to key industry challenges. Project topics come from member financial institutions and are driven by participating members with the support of the FSTC staff. For more information on FSTC or current and future FSTC projects, please visit http://www.fstc.org.

About the Object Management Group

OMG is an international, open membership, not-for-profit computer industry consortium. OMG Task Forces develop enterprise integration standards for a wide range of technologies, including: Real-time, Embedded and Specialized Systems, Analysis & Design, Architecture-Driven Modernization and Middleware and an even wider range of industries, including: Business Modeling and Integration, C4I, Finance, Government, Healthcare, Legal Compliance, Life Sciences Research, Manufacturing Technology, Robotics, Software-Based Communications and Space.

OMG's modeling standards, including the Unified Modeling Language[TM] (UML[R]) and Model Driven Architecture[R] (MDA[R]), enable powerful visual design, execution and maintenance of software and other processes, including IT Systems Modeling and Business Process Management. OMG's middleware standards and profiles are based on the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA[R]) and support a wide variety of industries. More information about OMG can be found at www.omg.org. OMG is headquartered in Needham, MA, USA.