SCIENCE

Hypercom Corporation introduced IntelliNAC, a high-density, multifunction point-of-sale network access controller that speeds transactions for financial institutions, merchants and other entities whose businesses benefit from processing large volumes of payment transactions securely, and gives Independent Sales Organizations (ISOs) a unique selling point to offer to their merchant customers. IntelliNAC builds on Hypercom’s industry-leading secure networking technology that is considered the platinum standard for modern, high-performance transaction networks, routing billions of transactions daily for hundreds of financial institutions worldwide.

“Merchants frequently experience spikes in data transactions and face increasingly complex criminal attempts to hack their payment systems, all of which hurts profits and damages the brands of acquirers, ISOs, merchants and others,” said T.K. Cheung, Vice President of Global Quality and Security at Hypercom Corporation. “IntelliNAC’s advanced telecommunications capabilities integrated into a secure, high-density unit specifically designed for point-of-sale dial and IP communications deliver even more advanced security and transaction capacity than our current networking products.”

Unlike competing products, the IntelliNAC authenticates transactions via Public Key Infrastructure standards required for PCI-DSS compliance and does so in multiple secure zones, meaning that the public key or certificate is never exposed. IntelliNAC is also vendor agnostic; with the IntelliNAC as the backbone of their secure payment systems, ISOs can offer to merchants payment terminals from any manufacturer, any payment application and any networking technology.

Also unlike competitors’ products, IntelliNAC enables ISOs to grow their businesses and lower their total cost of ownership by employing one integrated product to consolidate secure transport of their entire product offering: debit, credit, gift and stored value cards, electronic benefits transfer, age verification, prepaid, check conversion, electronic signature capture and advertising, as well as transaction processing and terminal downloads. Additionally, the system provides real-time reporting of their daily operations and transactions volumes.

The IntelliNAC system enables acquirers and processors to control end-to-end transaction transport on their own, thus eliminating the need to employ multiple third-party vendors and allowing ISOs to deploy quickly and securely their terminals and services to the field. IntelliNAC’s standards-based design facilitates easy migration from legacy systems to IP, and rapid adoption of emerging technologies such as VoIP carrier systems in the future. The system’s expandable platform design protects customers’ investments against future growth in transaction volumes at significant scale. Hypercom also has plans to add mobile to cellular gateway support.

Futureproof Integration for the Most Demanding Network Environments

Hypercom's IntelliNAC concentrator utilizes an advanced, high-density Digital Signal Processor network interface module that supports a full family of analog boards supporting PSTN connection or T1, E1 boards supporting CAS and ISDN PRI trunks on a single card. As a result, a single 19-inch-wide chassis can support up to 16 digital trunk lines totaling 480 multispeed, multiprotocol modem or data ports. The chassis also supports TCP/IP network interface cards, allowing a user to mix and match dial and IP transactions within a single, common platform designed for flexibility.

In addition to the network access interfaces, the IntelliNAC system uses Secure Socket Layer to encrypt and transmit transactions virtually instantaneously. The high-density, multifunction network access controller supports an array of host connection options such as X.25, SNA or TCP/IP, plus Wide Area Network interfaces supporting use of IP VPN.

Other features include hot-swappable components and dual AC or DC power supplies, dynamic multiprotocol dial access software, powerful transaction routing and load balancing functions and protocol conversion. For IP networking users, IntelliNAC can directly connect to the Internet and provides firewall function to protect a corporate LAN.

The feature-rich IntelliView network management server system and associated applications for IntelliNAC provide all of the tools needed to manage high-volume point-of-sale/point-of-transaction networks in true client/server architecture. Specifically designed for transaction networks, these systems provide features for status monitoring and detailed reporting, configuration management, activity and performance statistics, alerts and alarms, transaction statistics and analysis, remote downloads and upgrades.