National Australia Bank (NAB) is outsourcing maintenance, management and support of some legacy systems to Indian offshore providers Infosys and Satyam in a move that has implications for around 300 IT staff at the bank.
It was reported in November that NAB had hired outsourcing specialist TPI earlier this year to consider options for some of its technology operations, including legacy banking systems. Infosys, Satyam, IBM and Accenture are all thought to have submitted proposals.
According to press reports, NAB finished evaluating the proposals earlier this week and has awarded contracts to Indian vendors Infosys and Satyam
NAB spokeswoman Megan Lane told reporters the bank planned to offshore the maintenance and management of some legacy systems, but some of the work would remain in-house. But she did not state how many jobs would be affected by the move.
It is thought that around 300 NAB IT staff currently handle maintenance and support for legacy platforms.
The bank has already outlined plans for offshoring around 374 mainly back office jobs to offshore centres, mostly in India.
Details of NAB's future offshoring initiative were leaked to the Australian press last month after the bank posted documents detailing developments on the company Intranet.
In a separate move earlier this month NAB reported that it is teaming with Australia's Macquarie University to develop methods to threats including phishing, denial of service (DoS) attacks and the ID theft and fraud.
NAB says phishing will be a key area under investigation. Other research will combat 'botnets' which are networks of compromised computers used by criminals to commit crimes.
Gary Blair, NAB general manager of technology risk and security, says the cyber crime partnership is one of several measures the bank is investing in to shut down Web-based scams before they went live.
"Fraud is a problem for the financial services industry, law enforcement and the public alike, with electronic gateways including the Internet providing opportunistic criminals more entry points than traditional shop fronts," says Blair. "The research will enable NAB to better protect customers who are the innocent victims of cyber crime and related electronic enabled fraud."
Blair says customer awareness of cyber crime is growing but criminals are adapting new techniques as consumers become more aware of threats.
"The university lab will be able to use the intelligence to outsmart criminals," he adds.
Three NAB security specialists and 15 academics will staff the cyber crime laboratory. The academics are from Macquarie University's Division of Information Communication Sciences and the Centre for Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism, reflecting the cross disciplinary nature of the cyber crime problem.
NAB says it has recently secured additional Australian Research Council support to fund the initiative to 2010.