Imaging in Financial Services

Customer Situation

A small community bank with three locations in a small town had a VPN solution which wasn’t working well. Like all banks, this institution was looking for ways to increase efficiency and reduce costs. They had recently purchased a check document imaging solution from Blue Point Solutions and wanted all three locations to be able to utilize this application to reduce paperwork.

 Business Needs

First and foremost, the bank’s VPN solution was not working. The bank had already invested significant money and was very cautious in evaluating alternative solutions. Their major driver was to develop a “working” solution. Secondly, they hoped to be able to cut costs over their existing telecommunication expenditures.

The bank needed to implement the imaging software and wanted all sites to have access to this application.  

Also, the customer needed to make sure that they could comply with the GLBA (Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act). This Financial Services regulation created a broad federal legislative and regulatory framework for the protection of personal financial information collected by financial institutions. It requires banks to tell their customers what personal information they are collecting and how it is being used. The solution that the customer would ultimately select would need to help them to comply with this act.

Solution

tw telecom provided a three site VRS solution which provides 24x7 reliability. The hub site is configured with a VersiPak Mach3, providing 3 bonded T1s. The VersiPak Mach3 consists of 24 Business Lines and 2.5M of VRS bandwidth, which supports private data traffic among the locations. It also provides Internet connectivity for all of the locations.

At both of the two remote sites, the customer has 6 Business Lines and 512K VRS bandwidth.  

VersiPak VRS expands the bank’s private IP network, providing a secure manner to transfer their private data between locations. Internet bound traffic from all locations is sent though the main bank site, allowing the bank to control bandwidth and to limit access undesired sites.

Benefits

tw telecom’s VRS solution is a solid replacement for their VPN. It provides a   Layer 3 private LAN extension. This solution helped the bank do two additional things. First, they were able to cut their overall costs. Secondly, the bank was able to comply with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA). Private data that the bank wants to transfer between their multiple locations is differentiated from traffic destined for the Internet.

The bank likes that they have a single provider for their voice and data. They like the fact that at the hub location, the VersiPak Mach3 offers redundancy. Additional benefits include 24x7 support which TWTC provides as well as the fact that if one of their three T1s goes down, the other two stay up.   With this solution, voice always has priority, a feature that the bank feels is critical.  

Diagram