Information Technology in Financial Services

Stages of Software Development Life Cycle:

Software life cycle models describe phases of the software cycle and the order in which those phases
are executed. Each phase produces deliverables required by the next phase in the life cycle. Requirements are translated
into design. Code is produced according to the design which is called
development phase. After coding and development the testing verifies the deliverable of the
implementation phase against requirements.
There are following six phases in every Software development life cycle model:

1) Requirement gathering and analysis: Business requirements are gathered in this phase. This phase is the main
focus of the project managers and stake holders. Meetings with managers, stake holders and users are held in order to
determine the requirements like; Who is going to use the system? How will they use the system? What data should be
input into the system? What data should be output by the system? These are general questions that get answered during a
requirements gathering phase. After requirement gathering these requirements are analyzed for their validity and the
possibility of incorporating the requirements in the system to be development is also studied.
Finally, a Requirement Specification document is created which serves the purpose of guideline for
the next phase of the model.

2) Design: In this phase the system and software design is prepared from the requirement specifications which were
studied in the first phase. System Design helps in specifying hardware
and system requirements and also helps in defining overall system architecture. The system design
specifications serve as input for the next phase of the model.

3) Implementation / Coding: On receiving system design documents, the work is divided in modules/ units and actual
coding is started. Since, in this phase the code is produced so it is the main focus for the developer. This is the longest
phase of the software development life cycle.

4) Testing : After the code is developed it is tested against the requirements to make sure that the product is actually
solving the needs addressed and gathered during the requirements phase. During
this phase unit testing, integration testing, system testing, acceptance testing are done.

5) Deployment: After successful testing the product is delivered / deployed to the customer for their use.
6) Maintenance: Once when the customers starts using the developed system then the actual problems comes up and
needs to be solved from time to time. This process where the care is taken
for the developed product is known as maintenance.

Parity Check :
A parity check is the process that ensures accurate data transmission between nodes during communication. A parity bit is
appended to the original data bits to create an even or odd bit number; the number of bits with value one. The source then
transmits this data via a link, andbits are checked and verified at the destination. Data is considered accurate ifthe number of bits
(even or odd) matches the number transmitted from the source. Parity checking was created to eliminate data communication
errors, is a simple method of network data verificationand has an easy and understandableworking mechanism.

Party Bit:
A parity bit, or check bit is a bit added to the end of a string of binary code that indicates whether the number of bits in
the string with the value one is even or odd. Parity bits are used as the simplest form of error detecting code.
There are two variants of parity bits: even parity bit and odd parity bit.
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Database Management System:

Stands for "Database Management System." In short, a DBMS is a database program. Technically speaking, it is a
software system that uses a standard method of cataloging, retrieving, and running queries on data. The DBMS manages
incoming data, organizes it, and provides ways for the data to be modified or extracted by users or other programs.
Some DBMS examples include MySQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft Access, SQL Server, FileMaker, Oracle, RDBMS,
dBASE, Clipper, and FoxPro. Since there are so many database management systems available, it is important for there to
be a way for them to communicate with each other. For this reason, most database software comes with an Open Database
Connectivity (ODBC) driver that allows the database to integrate with other databases. For example, common SQL
statements such as SELECT and INSERT are translated from a program's proprietary syntax into a syntax other databases
can understand.
A database management system (DBMS) is a software package designed to define, manipulate, retrieve and manage data
in a database. A DBMS generally manipulates the data itself, the data format, field names, record structure and file
structure. It also defines rules to validate and manipulate this data. A DBMS relieves users of framing programs for data
maintenance. Fourth-generation query languages, such as SQL, are used along with the DBMS package to interact with a
database.

Data Center:
A data center is a facility used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and
storage systems. It generally includes redundant or backup power supplies, redundant data communications connections,
environmental controls (e.g., air conditioning, fire suppression) and various security devices.

Data Warehouse:
A data warehouse is a central repository for all or significant parts of the data that an enterprise's various business systems
collect.Typically, a data warehouse is housed on an enterprise mainframe server. Data from various online transaction
processing (OLTP) applications and other sources is selectively extracted and organized on the data warehouse database
for use by analytical applications and user queries. Data warehousing emphasizes the capture of data from diverse sources
for useful analysis and access.

Disaster Recovery Site:

Disaster recovery (DR) involves a set of policies and procedures to enable the recovery or continuation of vital
technology infrastructure and systems following a natural or human-induced disaster. Disaster recovery focuses on the IT
or technology systems supporting critical business functions, as opposed to business continuity, which involves keeping
all essential aspects of a business functioning despite significant disruptive events. Disaster recovery is therefore a subset
of business continuity.

National Payment Switch Bangladesh (NPSB)

The Bangladesh Bank has introduced National Payment Switch Bangladesh (NPSB) in order to facilitate interbank
electronic payments originating from different channels like Automated Teller Machines (ATM), Point of Sales (POS),
Internet, Mobile Devices etc. The main objective of NPSB is to create a common electronic platform for the switches in
Bangladesh. NPSB is a mother switch of of all other switches in the country. NPSB will facilitate the expansion of the
card based payment networks substantially and promote e-commerce throughout the country. Online payment of
Government dues, using cards and account number information through Internet will greatly be enhanced using NPSB.
Payment Systems Department (PSD) is concerned to operate and settle the transactions regularly.
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Information Technology in Financial Services

Business continuity planning:

The Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is an essential part of any organisations response planning. It sets out how
the business will operate following an incident and how it expects to return to business as usual in the quickest
possible time afterwards.
Business continuity planning involves developing a practical plan for how your business can prepare for, and
continue to operate after an incident or crisis. A business continuity plan will help you to:
identify and prevent risks where possible
prepare for risks that you can't control
respond and recover if a risk (e.g. an incident or crisis) occurs.

Electronic Funds Transfer Network (EFTN)

Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) is a system of transferring money from one bank account directly to another
without any paper money changing hands. One of the most widely-used EFT programs is Direct Deposit, in
which payroll is deposited straight into an employee's bank account, although EFT refers to any transfer of
funds initiated through an electronic terminal, including credit card, ATM, Fedwire and point-of-sale (POS)
transactions. It is used for both credit transfers, such as payroll payments, and for debit transfers, such as
mortgage payments.
BEFTN facilitates the transmission of payments between the banks electronically, which makes it faster and
efficient means of inter-bank clearing over the existing paper-based system i.e. BACPS. It is able to handle a
wide variety of credit transfers such as payroll, foreign and domestic remittances, social security, company
dividends, retirement, expense reimbursement, bill payments, corporate payments, government tax payments,
social security payments and person to person payments. The system could handle debit transfers such as
mortgage payments, loan payments, insurance premiums, utility bill payments, government tax payments,
government licenses and fees.

Audit Trail:
Paper or 'electronic' trail that gives a step by step documented history of a transaction. It enables an examiner to trace the
financial data from general ledger to the source document (invoice, receipt, voucher, etc.). The presence of a reliable and
easy to follow audit trail is an indicator of good internal controls instituted by a firm, and forms the basis of objectivity.

Online Banking:
Online banking is an electronic payment system that enables customers of a financial institution to conduct financial
transactions on a website operated by the institution, such as a retail bank, virtual bank, credit union or building society.
Online banking is also referred as Internet banking, e-banking, virtual banking and by other terms.
To access a financial institution's online banking facility, a customer with Internet access would need to register with the
institution for the service, and set up some password (under various names) for customer verification. The password for
online banking is normally not the same as for telephone banking

Mobile Banking:
Mobile Banking is a Banking process without bank branch which provides financial services to unbanked communities
efficiently and at affordable cost. To provide banking and financial services, such as cash-in, cash out, merchant payment,
utility payment, salary disbursement, foreign remittance, government allowance disbursement, ATM money withdrawal
through mobile technology devices, i.e. Mobile Phone, is called Mobile Banking.

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SMS Banking:
SMS banking is a type of mobile banking, a technology-enabled service offering from banks to its customers, permitting
them to operate selected banking services over their mobile phones using SMS messaging

SWIFT:
The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) provides a network that enables
financial institutions worldwide to send and receive information about financial transactions in a secure, standardized and
reliable environment. Swift also sells software and services to financial institutions, much of it for use on the SWIFTNet
Network.

Online Processing:
A method of using a terminal remote from a company mainframe or an interface to the Internet like an
e-commerce website for taking product orders and dealing with payments. The online processing of orders
offers considerable savings and greater overall efficiency for most business sales operations, although system
down time can be costly in terms of lost sales.

Spam:
spamming is the use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited messages (spam), especially advertising. As well
as sending messages repeatedly on the same site. While the most widely recognized form of spam is e-mail spam.

Spyware:
Spyware is software that aids in gathering information about a person or organization without their knowledge and that may
send such information to another entity without the consumer's consent, or that asserts control over a computer without the
consumer's knowledge.

Cash Memory:
Cache memory, also called CPU memory, is random access memory (RAM) that a computer microprocessor can access
more quickly than it can access regular RAM.
As the microprocessor processes data, it looks first in the cache memory and if it finds the data there (from a previous
reading of data), it does not have to do the more time-consuming reading of data from larger memory

ATM:
An automated teller machine or automatic teller machinealso known as an automated banking machineis an
electronic telecommunications device that enables the customers of a financial institution to perform financial
transactions without the need for a human cashier, clerk or bank tellerOn most modern ATMs, the customer is identified
by inserting a plastic ATM card with a magnetic stripe or a plastic smart card with a chip that contains a unique card
number and some security information. Authentication is provided by the customer entering a personal identification
number (PIN).

Smart Card:
A smart card is a plastic card about the size of a credit card, with an embedded microchip that can be loaded with data,
used for telephone calling, electronic cash payments, and other applications, and then periodically refreshed for additional
use. Smart cards can provide identification, authentication, data storage and application processing.[2] Smart cards may
provide strong security authentication for single sign-on (SSO) within large organizations.

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Extranet:
An extranet is a computer network that allows controlled access from outside of an organization's intranet. Extranets are
used for specific use cases including business-to-business (B2B). In a business-to-business context, an extranet can be
viewed as an extension of an organization's intranet that is extended to users outside the organization, usually partners,
vendors and suppliers, in isolation from all other Internet users. It is in context of that isolation that an extranet is different
from an intranet or internet. In contrast, business-to-consumer (B2C) models involve known servers of one or more
companies, communicating with previously unknown consumer users. An extranet is similar to a DMZ in that it provides
access to needed services for channel partners, without granting access to an organization's entire network.

Digital Signature:
A digital signature is a mathematical scheme for demonstrating the authenticity of a digital message or document. A valid
digital signature gives a recipient reason to believe that the message was created by a known sender, such that the sender
cannot deny having sent the message (authentication and non-repudiation) and that the message was not altered in transit
(integrity). Digital signatures are commonly used for software distribution, financial transactions, and in other cases
where it is important to detect forgery or tampering.

Data Encryption:
Encryption is the process of using an algorithm to transform information to make it unreadable for unauthorized users.
This cryptographic method protects sensitive data such as credit card numbers by encoding and transforming information
into unreadable cipher text. This encoded data may only be decrypted or made readable with a key. Symmetric-key and
asymmetric-key are the two primary types of encryption. Encryption is essential for ensured and trusted delivery of
sensitive information

Data Decryption:
Decryption is the process of transforming data that has been rendered unreadable through encryption back to its
unencrypted form. In decryption, the system extracts and converts the garbled data and transforms it to texts and images
that are easily understandable not only by the reader but also by the system. Decryption may be accomplished manually or
automatically. It may also be performed with a set of keys or passwords.

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