Radio Frequency Identification RFID is a booming business, with much of interest to the printing industry, but not in quite the way that was originally envisaged. About 30 billion cases arrive at major retailers every year and it was thought that most of those cases would be RFID tagged under retailer mandates by now, mainly to reduce stockouts. However, whereas the power of Western retailers meant that such a ruse worked well with anti-theft tags, this time the cost is far higher and there has been much dragging of feet. Even those consumer goods companies that have been mandated are only tagging a few percent of their output and that at a cumulative loss of over $100 million, aggravated by technical problems and over-specification. 

Drug packaging 

Another setback for RFID has been the Food and Drug Administration in the US damping its previous enthusiasm for RFID on pharmaceutical packages for anti counterfeiting purposes, where it had wanted it in place in the USA by 2007. That could have led to up to 15 billion tagged prescription drug packages yearly being tagged in the West alone but today only Viagra™, Trizivir™ and a few other drugs are RFID tagged and then only for the US market, it all adding up to only a few million packages yearly. 

So called e-pedigree is being progressed and the FDA still wants RFID as an option in achieving this but a killer here has been the lack of a standard. It is like anti-theft tags: there are three incompatible types in use, though in this case there is some hope that the FDA will make a decision in two years after the present phase. Meanwhile, in Europe and the USA, 2D barcodes are starting to be used extensively to give the required unique ID to every pack, this working through secure databases to give “e-pedigree” of origin and history. However, barcodes are easily copied and subject to obscuration, misorientation, damage and other reading difficulties and this means that drugs will not be checked for genuineness automatically at high speed or even very often compared with the situation if RFID was used. 

Meanwhile, drug company Cephalon is an international biopharmaceutical company that has deployed at RFID solution from OAT Systems (a company recently acquired by Checkpoint Systems) for serialised shipment container tracking, extending its SAP Auto-ID Infrastructure’s reach to operational processes and workflows. Cephalon has been testing RFID technology for three years to help improve supply chain efficiency and visibility, and its RFID-based serialised container tracking, suitable for e-pedigree, will “help the company to combat counterfeiting as well as to improve process execution.” 

Printed smart blisterpacks 

RFID-enabled blisterpacks and plastic bottles are increasingly used in drug trials that record which pill was removed and when but the global market for that is only a few million packs yearly, a given trial involving no more than 30,000 packs, the average being about 10,000. It is an interesting application because the sensors are usually printed using silver ink, as are the connecting patterns and the RFID antenna and later the batteries and transistors will be printed. 

Mainly a booming industry 

Fortunately RFID is booming in just about every other sector. Having tripled in value in the last two years, the RFID market will quintuple in the next ten years by value. Some suppliers, such as Avery Dennison, are going vertical in not only making the naked RFID inlays but converting them into printed labels. Avery Dennison recently bought the giant converter Paxar, for $1.2 billion, which converts the RFID labels for the world’s largest adopter Marks and Spencer for item level apparel - soon to be 350 million yearly - and that means it will now do the whole label - RFID inlay and conversion. It will be well positioned to serve the 60 organisations worldwide that are rolling out RFID labels on apparel, some of them being in the form of the stitched designer labels and used for both anti counterfeiting and stock control and others being simply swing tags for stock control. About 20 billion RFID labels will be fitted to apparel in 2018. 

Printing highest volume RFID then printing other electronics 

For high volume RFID, such as replacing a significant proportion of the ten trillion barcodes printed yearly with RFID, the silicon chip in the label must be replaced with something printed, not just the antenna. Of course, printed RFID is only part of an emerging $300 billion business in printing many forms of electronics and electrics in very high volume. Many players are therefore broadening their thrust. For example, Leonhard Kurz, a German company employing 3000 people, now develops flexographically printed RFID including printed transistors, reel to reel, to replace that RFID chip but it also develops organic solar cells printed reel to reel and, this year, it newly offers an innovative printed RFID antenna. 

Much larger volumes of RFID labels 

Most RFID tags take the form of labels nowadays, not the plastic mouldings used in the past. Starting with RFID labels and inserts with just the antenna printed, there is now steady progress towards tagging four billion items of air baggage and freight each year and 70 million passports a year are now fitted where the high security chips mean that these inserts are $5 each not the giveaway price of ten cents for labels on pallets and cases. In four cities of China, a total of about 40 million books will be RFID labelled this year and there are many more applications like that. 

Large order value 

Two companies are servicing half billion dollar orders this year for RFID tags and systems, one military and the other for non-stop road tolling and technical breakthroughs are coming thick and fast. For example, it is now clear that the silicon chip in traditional RFID tags will never be supplied profitably ie sustainably below a price of a few cents yet the whole tag must drop below one cent if hundreds of billions are to be sold. Fortunately, printed transistor circuits with printed antennas attached are being developed by 360 organisations, partly for the new printed RFID. They are variously made by flexography, gravure, inkjet and screen printing and often combinations of these for the different layers. As yet, this is in the laboratory, though several companies say they will be selling products by the end of 2008. 

Printing transistors to replace the chip 

Kovio ink jet prints nano-silicon transistors reel to reel on stainless steel foil with thousand of these transistors per RFID tag. It says it can meet the world’s most popular RFID specifications ISO 14443/ ISO 15693 as used in library books, passports, drug packages and RFID cards and tickets. It will launch these shortly as standard transport tickets. There are 20 billion tickets bought in the world every year and the Chinese National Railway is trialling 120 million chip-based tickets with a view to replacing its three billion rail tickets every year as the price comes down. Kovio says it can achieve 80% cost reduction on the RFID chip now and 90% reduction in two years. IDTechEx forecasts that, If printed tags drop below one cent, about 500 billion will be fitted to consumer goods in 2018. 

Inkjet favoured but not necessarily forever 

Early experiments with printing of electronics and electrics tended to use screen printing and it is still used for membrane keyboards, laminar batteries and capacitors and some RFID antennas. Resistors and conductors in battery testers on batteries have now moved on to volume production with gravure etc because they sell in billions. Inkjet is now the favourite printing technology for printed electronics because it conserves the expensive ink, is instantly reprogrammable, tolerates uneven surfaces, is undemanding in ink rheology, particulates and so on. People variously use it reel to reel to make photo-detector arrays (Nanoident), solar cells (Nanosolar, G24innovations), sensors (GSI) and transistors (ORFID, Organic ID, Plastic Logic and Toppan Printing in the laboratory). However, none of the proponents are fully hooked on it because its resolution, speed, area and other aspects are suboptimal for many electronic and electrical applications. Other printing technologies are therefore being explored including wider use of flexography, acoustically focussed aerosol jetting by Optomec and gravure. 

More about all forms of printed electronics 

Those wanting to explore the bigger picture should attend Printed Electronics USA December 3-4 San Francisco www.idtechex.com/peUSA where companies such as Northrop Grumman, Fuji Film, Nokia, Kodak, InkTec of Korea, and BASF of Germany will present their breakthroughs alongside many universities and company start-ups. Printed Electronics Asia is October 8-9 in Tokyo with Kovio, Sony, Hitachi Chemical, Toppan Forms and Hewlett Packard in the lineup. This event even has fascinating tours of Dai Nippon Printing, The University of Tokyo, Sony and Toppan Printing to see relevant work that you would be unlikely to access if you applied on your own. IDTechEx has the inside track. 

Most of the trends in RFID will be fully explored at the IDTechEx conference “RFID Europe” in the legendary Cambridge University in Cambridge UK on September 30-October 1. Cambridge University researches both inorganic and organic printed transistors and many other printed and potentially printed electronic components - even lasers. At this event, visits to local centres of excellence include Conductive Inkjet Technology and innovative RFID user Marshall Aerospace at Cambridge Airport. See www.idtechex.com/RFIDEurope. 

By Dr Peter Harrop  

LONDON, July 10 /PRNewswire/ – 

FinScan, a leading provider of Sanctions list and PEP compliance solutions for the financial services industry, and TONBELLER, one of the world’s leading suppliers of anti-money laundering compliance solutions, today announced the development of a joint methodology that will enable financial services organizations to greatly expand the scope and effectiveness of their PEP screening and transaction monitoring initiatives with minimal increase in administrative effort. 

High volumes of false positives drive organisations to screen only those customers with a high risk product category or portfolio. Due to this limitation, sophisticated money launderers are able to beat the system by using a combination of ‘low risk products’ to reduce the probability of being screened. 

FinScan and TONBELLER have joined forces to minimise this exposure by offering a package of ‘best of breed’ products that now make it possible for an organisation to screen their entire customer database for PEPs and other heightened risk entities and combine this with transaction monitoring based not only on the behaviour of the customer but also on their individual risk factors. This comprehensive risk-based approach will enable organisations to screen and monitor their complete database with only a marginal increase in the number of records requiring review. 

Mike Healy, FinScan’s executive vice president of operations, EMEA, says, ‘This new development is more than simply widening our product offerings and geographical coverage by partnering. The integration of FinScan with TONBELLER’s SironAML offering ensures that each product actually enhances the functionality of the other. This truly unique approach brings excellent products together to minimise the exposure organisations are potentially suffering — a great example of one plus one equalling three.” 

“We believe that our partnership will help FinScan and TONBELLER to bring a better solution and more value to the market,” explains Torsten Mayer, Managing Director of TONBELLER. “This partnership strengthens the competitive edge that our SironAML product has against other transaction monitoring solutions that fail to address the challenges of the Third EU Money Laundering Directive because it delivers to the client a more comprehensive way of screening for all money laundering activity — including that which is designed to not be detected. We look forward to challenging the activity that this loophole facilitates.” 

About FinScan 

As the compliance business division of Innovative Systems, Inc., (ISI), FinScan protects organizations against non-compliance with the world-class data quality and data matching capabilities that are the cornerstone of all ISI products and services. 

FinScan helps financial services organizations worldwide meet the requirements of international government regulatory agencies by providing the most advanced sanctions list and PEP compliance solutions available. FinScan offers 24/7/365 list management; licensed, hosted, or transactional screening options; and automated due diligence reports to help ensure the most effective and accurate compliance for our clients. The FinScan Web site is located at www.FinScan.com. 

About Innovative Systems, Inc. (ISI) 

Innovative Systems is a world leader in delivering enterprise customer information solutions to organizations whose success depends on a complete and accurate understanding of their customers. ISI’s data quality and data management solutions include the i/Lytics(R) Enterprise Data Quality Suite; i/Lytics GLOBAL(TM), a CASS-certified address verification solution; and Synchronos(TM), a master data management solution for enterprise customer data. 

Since 1968, companies worldwide have relied on ISI’s data quality software, systems integration, database solutions and customer data quality audits. The company has set the standard for data quality management in thousands of applications in more than 30 countries. ISI maintains headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with European operations based in London. The Innovative Web site is located at www.innovativesystems.com. 

About TONBELLER 

For 35 years, TONBELLER has been one of the leading providers of business intelligence software. Banks, insurance providers and financial service providers use its compliance solutions to help detect and combat white-collar crime. The company’s range of products covers the areas of risk analysis, combating money laundering, fraud detection, sanctions list monitoring and securities market abuse. We are committed to remaining a dependable partner in the future for all matters pertaining to compliance management and for this reason we continue to invest in targeted R&D of our software solutions. The outstanding expertise of the company is reflected in over 700 successful client installations in 40 different countries. 

For further information about TONBELLER and its products, visit www.tonbeller.com. 

Trademark Notice 

FinScan is a trademark of Innovative Systems, Inc. All other products or company names are used for identification purposes only, and may be trademarks of their respective owners. 

Financial Crime Check today launched its new financial crimes risk intelligence and typology analytical database platform to support financial institutions meeting their Anti Money Laundering (AML) and Counter Terrorism Financing (CTF) obligations and managing their fraud vulnerabilities.

Financial crime is a lucrative business for criminals and terrorists.

IMF estimates of money laundering indicate that between 2-5% of global GDP is laundered each year – in the vicinity of $2.5 trillion per annum. Fraud is estimated to cost US organisations approximately $600 billion per year and terrorist financiers are known to exploit and add even more complexity to the sophisticated money laundering techniques already used by serious criminals.

Where does this leave financial institutions? Exposed to the sophisticated techniques that criminals and terrorists will use to launder, defraud and finance terrorism through the global financial system. In response, Financial Crime Check has developed an online financial crime risk intelligence and analytical database designed by compliance, investigations and technology analysts with extensive experience in financial crimes. Using leading edge technology, Financial Crime Check monitors and identifies risk intelligence from:
• over 2800 sources; and
• our unique global network of financial institutions, insurers, accountants, lawyers, precious metal and stone dealers, casinos, real estate agents and other industries.

Using this intelligence, a global team of financial crimes analysts at Financial Crime Check profiles the latest money laundering, terrorist financing, fraud and internal/employee fraud techniques, trends and threats.

“Financial crime is on the rise and financial institutions are undoubtedly a major target of terrorists and criminals,” said James Carnaby, Senior Analyst at Financial Crime Check.

“What we are seeing is organised activity like never before - criminals are continually evolving and enhancing their fraud techniques and looking for the best way to layer their criminal revenue through complicated schemes using multiple products and accounts. They know that financial institutions are using technology and applying financial crimes controls across fraud, money laundering and terrorist financing. Therefore, they will attempt to be one step ahead of the diligent efforts of financial institutions including: using new technology, exploiting vulnerabilities in complex financial products/systems, tapping into networks of associates, (including accounting and legal professionals) and looking for assistance from financial institution employees – with employee collusion with criminals/terrorists a worrying trend. Financial Crime Check empowers financial institutions to be one step ahead of criminals, employee fraudsters and terrorist financiers by providing up to date financial crimes risk intelligence and typologies across money laundering, terrorist financing and fraud. This information can be used to refine transaction monitoring system detection scenarios right through to front office customer account opening procedures.”

Key benefits of Financial Crime Check include:
• Understand your high financial crime risks immediately – Financial Crime Check provides a detailed regularly updated risk dashboard that consolidates our extensive global analysis of financial crime trends, typologies and cases to empower financial institutions to easily identify their highest immediate financial crime risks.
• Deterrence - money launderers, terrorists and fraudsters will target organisations with the weakest perceived risk controls. Use of Financial Crime Check is a deterrent to criminals, both outside your organisation as well as within.
• Compliance - Financial Crime Check provides a powerful tool to demonstrate best practice compliance to regulators and law enforcement.
• Fine tune transaction monitoring systems - suggested detection scenario configurations assist financial institutions reduce their transaction monitoring false positive ratios and ensure detection scenarios are relevant and up to date – something forefront in the mind of regulators.

• Investigations – high volumes of alerts from transaction monitoring systems can overwhelm financial crime investigations teams. Financial Crime Check helps investigators and analysts to identify alerts that pose the highest money laundering, terrorist financing, fraud and internal fraud risk.

• Staff training – with criminals continually evolving their laundering, terrorist financing and fraud schemes, Financial Crime Check is a comprehensive risk intelligence solution that
can be used in a financial institution’s money laundering, terrorist financing and fraud staff training and awareness programs.

• User friendly interface and relevant functionality – Financial Crime Check has been designed and developed by experienced financial crime analysts with other financial crime analysts, compliance managers, risk managers, investigators and legal/accounting professionals in mind. 

Singapore - Cyber swindlers posing as victims in disaster- hit China and Myanmar are targeting citizens of Singapore and elsewhere with email scams and phony websites soliciting donations, news reports said Tuesday. The frauds have prompted widespread alerts from sources including information technology firms in Singapore about the attempts to capitalize on the earthquake and cyclone, which have claimed at least 150,000 lives. 

Experts told The Straits Times that the perpetrators are hoping to tap into the generosity of Singaporeans by posing as victims and charities. 

Other messages promise news updates but are laced with viruses that attack the users’ computers and steal personal information, the report said. 

The best defence is common sense, said Paul Ducklin, Asia-Pacific head of technology at IT security firm Sophos. 

“Sadly, some people have forgotten or perhaps have never learned from the lessons of the past,” he was quoted as saying. “Untrusted files from unknown sources are just that: unknown and untrusted. Don’t open them.” 

15 April 2008 

APACS, the UK payments association, has advised about the increasing numbers of phishing attacks in the UK and reminded consumers of the tips to help them avoid falling victim to such crimes.

Phishing has become far more frequent in recent months with the latest APACS data showing more than 10,000 reported phishing incidents in the first quarter of 2008 - up over 200 per cent from the same period last year.

Phishing is the name given to emails that claim to be from your bank but are actually sent to you by fraudsters. These emails typically urge you to click on a link that takes you to a fake website identical to the one you would expect to see. You are then asked to verify or update your personal security information but, by doing so, you are actually giving your information to the fraudster who has created the fake website. The fraudster then uses the details to access your online bank account and take your money.

Although online banking fraud losses decreased by a third from £33.5 million in 2006 to £22.6m in 2007 the fraudsters are still having some success in duping customers with phishing emails - which is why the industry is keen to remind customers to remain on their guard to these scams.

In a single phishing incident, thousands or even million of emails are sent out by fraudsters, typically trying to convince people to click on a link that will send them to a fake website. The criminals’ objective is to fool people into thinking it is a genuine site so they will enter their online banking security information.

Sandra Quinn, director of communications at APACS, says: “Although online banking fraud losses fell last year the fraudsters clearly aren’t giving up. Phishing scams are continuing to rise and they are becoming ever more sophisticated, which is why we want to remind people to remain wise to them. The advice is quite simple: just remember that your bank will never send you emails asking you to disclose PIN numbers, login details or complete passwords - if you receive an email of this nature you should delete it. If you think your details have been compromised you should contact your bank immediately.”

APACS research shows that although the number of people either deleting or taking no action when receiving a phishing email has increased from 75% in 2006 to 82% last year, there are still nearly one in five people who don’t follow these common sense precautions. Also, although 93% of people have anti-virus software on their PC, almost one in three people (29%) don’t have any anti-spyware software on their computer.

To avoid phishing scams, APACS advice to consumers is:

Always be suspicious of unsolicited emails that claim to be from your bank; delete any phishing emails that you receive;

Never give your login details, PINs or passwords in full by email - banks will never request these in this way;

Always access your internet bank account by typing your bank’s address into your web browser;

Ensure that there is a locked padlock or unbroken key in the bottom right of your browser window when accessing your bank’s website. The beginning of the bank’s internet address will also change from ‘http’ to ‘https’ when a secure connection is made.

Make sure home PCs are equipped with up-to-date security and virus protection;

Take extra care when using an internet cafe or public computer for online banking;

Phishing emails can be reported to APACS at reports@banksafeonline.org.uk.

David Cresswell, director of communications at the Financial Ombudsman Service, says: “We’ve seen a significant spike in consumer concerns over phishing scams in recent months. This suggests large numbers of people are still receiving phishing emails and not knowing what they are or whether they should respond to them - so we welcome this important reminder to customers.”

A number of broader industry initiatives are in place to help prevent online banking fraud and reduce the effectiveness of phishing scams. Some of these activities include:

Monitoring of the internet at industry and bank level to detect and close down phishing related websites;

Shared security intelligence with online partners; and

The development and use of clear and consistent advice for consumers.

The banking industry also works alongside a number of organisations such as the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), overseas law enforcement agencies, technology companies, anti-virus firms and Internet Service Providers to tackle this type of fraud.

Further help and advice about phishing and preventing online banking fraud is available at banksafeonline.org.uk.