Latest Entries
Posted by Jason Sherrill
This past week I attended a great panel discussion on Internet security hosted by GRAPE - Grand Rapids Area Professionals for Excellence. The panel was titled "Internet Reconnaissance: How Secure Are You?" and featured speakers with expertise in data center security to cyber war and from Microsoft to Symantec. Each panelist spoke about their own areas but it all boiled down to the fact that security is still a lot of work, regardless if you're a one person company or a multi-million dollar organization.
Posted by Jason Sherrill
Security gets a lot of attention in business today, but there are still some common practices that provide people with a false sense of safety when sharing sensitive data and files with others. Review these practices and make sure that everyone in your organization knows that these practices are dangerous and should not be used.
Posted by Jason Sherrill
Today Seth Godin shared a good idea that could have a profound impact on any bank, credit union or other type of business. It would take little effort, maybe a few minutes each day, Monday through Friday. The idea costs nothing to implement (except a few minutes of time each day) and is so easy that everyone in an organization could participate.
Posted by Jason Sherrill
The state of Massachusetts' new data security law,
201 CMR 17.00, will impact many web based applications that collect and store personal financial information about users. The new law reaches beyond the state's borders and affects organizations that are collecting and storing personally identifiable information (PII) about Massachusetts residents. The law requires that PII be encrypted during transport (from client to browser) and while at rest. The law imposes stiff monetary penalties for organizations that fail to provide these two types of data protection for PII that they collect and store about Massachusetts residents.
Posted by Jason Sherrill
InetSolution provides not only
secure website hosting for banking sites, but we also provide application development and security consulting. Even with all of the security awareness present in the financial industry, the overwhelming majority of banks and credit unions that fail our basic website form security audit. At a bare minimum, any form that collects information from visitors to your website should meet these criteria.
Posted by Donovan Myers
Some users like to print web pages, especially interest rate and disclosure pages on banking websites. Likewise, loan application confirmation pages on bank and credit union websites should be printable since customers often like to print copies for their records.
Posted by Donovan Myers
Recently, I was asked by one of our bank website design clients to come up with a way to make one set of input fields required if a particular radio button was checked and another set of input fields if the other radio button was checked. That would be just a simple JavaScript form check, however we also wanted to use CSS to visually let the user know that the field had just become required by making the text bold as well as adding a red asterisk (*) to the beginning.
Posted by Donovan Myers
Before you begin to start switching CSS styles on your web site, it is very important that you have already developed it using structural XHTML. It is also necessary that you have created at least 1 style sheet, and for the purposes of this tutorial, 1 alternate style sheet.
Posted by Jason Sherrill
For over 10 years we have worked with banks and credit union managers to design and implement online banking, internet & e-mail marketing, customer service and website solutions. In many instances, prior to our work with the organization, they had few metrics by which they measured their website's return on investment (ROI). To help our prospective clients establish a starting point for measuring ROI, we created an online
Bank and Credit Union Website ROI Calculator.
Posted by Misti Kenison
Obfuscation, aside from being a tongue-twister to pronounce, is an important topic within the realm of .NET development. While some folks around the inter-webs might have you believing that obfuscation is a useless, needless or worse - a complete joke and waste of your time - they couldn't be any further from the truth.
Posted by Jason Sherrill
Last Updated: May 15, 2011
We develop websites and online applications for banks, credit unions, eCommerce sites and corporate credit unions using the MemberProtect security framework for ASP.NET. It's imperative that we have a reliable source code control system that allows a team of developers, often working from different physical locations, to work together on a single project. Subversion is an easy to learn and use version control system that suits our needs almost perfectly. Subversion runs equally well on Windows and Unix, and it also works over HTTP & HTTPS, which is great if your development team works offsite. But setting up HTTPS access and web-based repository viewing via WebSVN can be tricky on Windows, so I’ve documented the steps I use to setup Subversion 1.4 + Apache 2.2 + WebSVN 2.0 on Windows.
Posted by Jason Sherrill
In this example, I’m showcasing how we can use ASP and AJAX to check for whether a username exists before a user completes a website registration form. When registering to join a community website, such as www.digg.com, users must typically choose a username or handle. Normally such usernames must be unique to the community, and because of this new users often run into the problem of choosing a name that is already in use.
Posted by Jason Sherrill
Numerous bank and credit union website managers have asked me why their website traffic and sales dropped after launching new, improved websites. Numerous factors have contributed to the declines, but there is one frequent cause that the designers didn't plan for when building the new sites - page renaming without setting up proper redirects. If you’re planning to redesign your credit union or bank's website, you need to understand what this means, why it happens and how you can avoid the problem.
Posted by Jason Sherrill
Most search optimization experts know the benefits of including keywords in URLs. But many credit union and bank websites store content in a database and use query string values to pass a record identifier to a single page that displays the content dynamically. The URLs look like http://…/news-display.asp?articleid=7584. Unfortunately, this method does not allow you to show search engines your keywords in the page file name like you could with a static HTML page. There is a solution however, and it’s called URL rewriting.
Posted by Donovan Myers
From time to time we come across a client who does not have any digital files for their branding. The original designer or printer (sometimes one in the same) never delivered the source files or they were lost after being created several years ago. Many times all we have to work with is a scan from a business card or brochure.
Posted by Donovan Myers
When working with database recordsets in an Active Server Pages environment, I often need to store my data in an array. The difficulty with arrays is that there are no native functions in VB Script to easily sort an array. We've created a quick function that will easily sort arrays.
Posted by Jason Sherrill
According to FBI Stats, nearly 70% of Data Theft Crimes Are Committed by People with Legitimate Access to Data from Inside
Posted by Donovan Myers
It is important to design a web site that is not only usable, but also accessible. Keeping users with disabilities in mind when designing your web site can greatly increase the success of your site. Just like ramps on sidewalks and buildings help people with disabilities, you can add ramps of your own to your web site. I'll share some tips on how to make your website ADA accessible using current technologies as of 2001.
Posted by Jason Sherrill
Pressure has been mounting on banks and credit unions to provide more solid protection of members' personal information stored on-line, but until now, only partial solutions existed. As many credit unions and on-line retailers have learned, firewalls and SSL do not provide essential protection of databases. Because of this, many credit unions delay launching e-branch strategies, while others move ahead and risk losing valuable member trust by exposing personal account information to hackers. Fortunately, credit unions and on-line retailers now have a solution available to them that will close the gaping hole that traditional data security methods leave open.
Posted by Erin Sherrill
As the number of runaway, homeless and troubled youth rises, the importance for a confidential source of assistance heightens. The Internet offers an additional means through which runaway youth, teens in crisis, and concerned friends and family members can receive support. To extend its reach, the National Runaway Switchboard selected InetSolution, Inc. http://www.inetsolution.com to complete its federally funded Web Redesign and Expansion Project. The National Runaway Switchboard (NRS) http://www.nrscrisisline.org has served as the federally-designated National Communication System for runaway and homeless youth since 1974. They operate a confidential hotline for runaway youth, teens in crisis and concerned friends and family members.
Posted by Donovan Myers
I recently read an article that described a number of issues that prevent disabled and elderly people from enjoying the Internet. I read this with interest because our InetActive™ suite of development tools can help to make your web site easier for disabled and elderly people to use. Let me share a few ideas that you can implement on your own site.
Posted by Jason Sherrill
As financial institutions move more of their services online, small regional credit unions are faced with the fact that they must also migrate to the Internet just to compete with their larger counterparts. Now Central Corporate Credit Union, a correspondent service provider to credit unions, is offering its member institutions an edge in online banking thanks to CenCorp's EDGE On-line. Developed by InetSolution, Inc. for CenCorp, EDGE On-line is an Internet-based cash management system for credit unions that allows them real-time access to current account information and lets them perform routine transactions online.
Posted by Jason Sherrill
It certainly is no secret that most bank and credit union marketers regularly review site statistics to measure how effective their web sites are. A strong statistics system will record how many unique visitors are on your site, which pages are viewed, how long a visitor stays on your site and even from which link a user found your site. There is no doubt that this information is valuable; however, it isn't enough to truly capitalize on the power of your web site.
Posted by Justin Gattuso
Compuware Corporation (NASDAQ:CPWR) today announced that Sandbox.com, a leading provider of interactive games, tested the performance of their web site with Compuware's Digital Test Solution. In preparation for their "It's Madness!" contest, running through the duration of the NCAA men's basketball tournament, Sandbox.com tested for site performance and user experience, successfully testing for user loads of over one million participants during the three week contest.