Blackboard has integrated microchip technology from Sony into the latest release of its campus ID card system. Release 3.6 of Blackboard Transact works with Sony's Felicity Card (FeliCa), a radio frequency chip on a card popular in Japan that promises greater security and faster performance for card-reading transactions.
After a five-year delay, Hillsborough Community College in the Tampa Bay, FL area will be introducing its first multifunctional identification card. The college will be using Heartland Payment Systems' Campus OneCard to launch the "Hawk Card" to provide the campus community with a cashless mechanism for accessing services on and off campus.
The University of Texas at Dallas has joined nine other institutions in the University of Texas system by announcing it will deploy a suite of procurement-related applications from SciQuest.
Starting this summer, Infinite Campus, which sells a multitude of applications for K-12 administration, will be adding electronic payment processing to its online registration program through an alliance with Vanco Services. Vanco is a Payment Card Industry (PCI) service provider that offers electronic payment processing for recurring and one-time transactions.
Heartland Payment Systems' Campus Solutions division is integrating its Campus OneCard with Alert Notification. The latter, a nationwide emergency notification membership service, provides a 24-hour-a-day call center to alert family or significant others when an accident or medical emergency occurs.
Heartland Payment Systems has launched a new service that handles financial, admissions, and education management, as well as financial aid payments for career colleges.
Texas State University-San Marcos will implement SciQuest's suite of eProcurement solutions to aggregate its purchasing. All departments within Texas State will use the new system, which will enable buyers to shop online with preferred suppliers in electronic catalogs or "punch-out" to suppliers' Web sites in an environment similar to that found on popular e-commerce sites.
The University HealthSystem Consortium has added a price competitive index (PCI) enhancement to SpendLINK, its proprietary supply chain spend analytics tool that helps academic medical centers optimize pricing.
Self-service bill pay may soon extend to the mobile phone.
The University of Georgia will be launching Secure Vault Payments (SVP) as a new tuition payment option. SVP is a service developed by NACHA, the non-profit electronics payments association that oversees the Automated Clearing House (ACH) Network, one of the largest electronic payment networks in the world.
Blackboard announced a number of colleges and universities that have recently decided to deploy its campus commerce and security management platform, among them Endicott College in Beverly, MA; Fort Lewis College in Durango, CO; and Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, CA.
Bradford Networks has announced three new software security appliances focused on identity management. The new products--User Visibility and Control (UVC), Device Profile and Control (DPC), and Behavior Monitoring and Control (BMC)--are subsets of Bradford's NAC Director and Campus Manager.
When a server belonging to a campus vendor is hacked, what are the overall implications for the institution? At the University of Houston, the experience led to the adoption of more stringent controls of its computer systems, including annual network audits and other best practices.
Opinions are mixed on what the new Payment Card Industry (PCI) DSS 1.2 standard will mean for security pros going forward. However, the mandate is clear: protect data.
Microsoft has released a white paper on identity theft with the aim of starting a "vendor-neutral" discussion on the use of "information cards" as an Internet security solution.
