Web Hosting and Support, Internet banking application processing
Summary:
Web site and application hosting, disaster recovery planning.
Developed a web interface for customers to sign up for Internet banking
services and back end application to process these customer requests.
Background:
Nomad Communications, the agency of record for Mascoma Savings Bank,
needed a technology partner to host and support the Bank’s new web
site. 53 Technology worked with Nomad and Mascoma Savings Bank to
develop a hosting plan to meet the needs of a customer operating in a
highly regulated industry.
The Problem:
For most enterprises, launching a new web site with a new hosting
company requires little more than moving files and updating the domain
record. For banks, this process is considerably more complicated as
they must comply with strict regulatory guidelines governing their IT
environments. For Mascoma Savings Bank’s new web site this meant
ensuring the new hosting environment met all regulatory requirements
and developing a disaster recovery plan that included contingencies for
complete loss of the hosting facility.
The Solution:
53 Technology worked with Mascoma Savings Bank to fully understand
the bank’s regulatory obligations. We then worked with hosting
companies located in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania to ensure the
primary and failover hosting environments satisfied industry regulators.
In addition to the new web site, 53 Technology also developed a web
application to enable customers to submit requests for Internet banking
services directly from the web site. On the back end, a browser based
interface where bank employees responsible for authorizing and managing
these customer requests replaced what had been a paper based process.
All interactions with customer data are secured through SSL as well as
encryption of all data stored.
The Results:
Customer response to Mascoma Savings Bank’s new web site has been
excellent. Use of the bank’s online services has increased
dramatically. The number customers requesting Internet banking services
has increased from less than 10 per week to and average of 10 per day.
Processing the large increase in customer requests has had very little
impact on the bank employees as the bank end processes have been
streamlined.
System Features:
The primary hosting environment features a Red Hat Linux server in a
state of the art data center. The server is protected by a managed
firewall. Backups to local storage are performed daily and the server
is mirrored to a remote server located in another state using Rsync.
Technology:
- Dedicated Red Hat Linux server
- Rsync
- SFTP
- PHP scripting language
- PostgreSQL database
- Smarty PHP templating engine
- PEAR PHP components
