Target Corp. has unveiled a new program for members of its Target Circle 360 loyalty program that provides delivery from more than 100 beloved retailers beyond Target – with no same-day delivery price markups that would get passed on to customers. While same-day delivery from Target has always been free of price markups, this latest offering aims to make this service from many more locations even easier and more affordable. In contrast to many other membership programs that limit access to a one retailer, Target Circle 360 now gives members unlimited same-day delivery from Target and Shipt’s curated network of 100-plus retailers, among them CVS, PetSmart and Lowe’s Home Improvement, along with such popular regional grocers. New Target Circle 360 members who want to access this latest benefit will receive a special $20 off their first order of $75 or more. In addition to this new feature, Target Circle 360 members take advantage of the following everyday exclusive benefits: 1) Early and exclusive access to such deals and experiences as Target Circle Week, in addition to limited-time offerings and partnerships; 2) Recently introduced monthly Target Circle 360 freebies that allow members to choose from free products, dollars toward their next purchase and more, redeemable in-store or online. 3) Free two-day shipping on hundreds of thousands of items 4) Extended windows on returns 5) Unlimited same-day delivery on orders of $35 or more 6) All of the benefits of Target Circle, including access to automatic deals and personalized bonuses.
Elastic’s new plugin to accelerate open-source vector search index build times and queries on Nvidia GPUs; integrates with Nvidia validated designs to enable on-premises AI agents
Elastic announced that Elasticsearch integrates with the new NVIDIA Enterprise AI Factory validated design to provide a recommended vector database for enterprises to build and deploy their own on-premises AI factories. Elastic will use NVIDIA cuVS to create a new Elasticsearch plugin that will accelerate vector search index build times and queries. NVIDIA Enterprise AI Factory validated designs enable Elastic customers to unlock faster, more relevant insights from their data. Elasticsearch is used throughout the industry for vector search and AI applications, with a thriving open source community. Elastic’s investment to accelerate vector search on GPUs builds upon previous longstanding efforts to optimize its vector database performance through hardware-accelerated CPU SIMD instructions, new vector data compression innovations like Better Binary Quantization and making Filtered HNSW faster. With Elasticsearch and the NVIDIA Enterprise AI Factory reference design, enterprises can unlock deeper insights and deliver more relevant, real-time information to AI agents and generative AI applications.
IPQS Email Verification tech enables businesses to accurately identify fraudulent or suspicious emails at scale by using email reputation database to analyze factors such as email age, domain reputation, and historical fraud associations
IPQS launched its IPQS Email Verification Database. This database is the first of its kind, enabling businesses to validate email addresses at scale. It reduces the need for external API calls for every fraud check, and makes it easier to comply with data privacy regulations. The IPQS Email Verification Database enables businesses to identify fraudulent, disposable, or suspicious emails with unparalleled accuracy by tapping into IPQS’s vast repository of email reputation data. By analyzing factors such as email age, domain reputation, and historical fraud associations, companies can significantly enhance fraud detection while improving customer trust. Additionally, businesses can maintain better email hygiene by filtering out invalid or risky email addresses, improving deliverability rates and sender reputation. IPQS provides businesses with the most comprehensive access to granular email risk intelligence. This enables organizations to detect high-risk users, block fraudulent account registrations, and prevent payment fraud at scale. Delivered securely via an API, the database is updated on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, depending on business requirements: On-Premise Deployment; Lightweight Design; Regulatory Compliance; Unmatched Data Accuracy; Email List Hygiene. With the IPQS Email Verification Database, businesses can tap into the freshest, most comprehensive email risk intelligence, CEO Dennis Weiss said.
AI-powered cyberattacks are expected within a year and will emerge from models that are less controlled than OpenAI and Anthropic
Kevin Mandia, one of the most prolific cyber entrepreneurs and investors, predicts the world is only a year away from an AI-agent-enabled cyberattack. Mandia warned that chances are we won’t even know an AI tool was the perpetrator. “Everybody’s going to look at that, wonder how that got done, and it’s probably AI behind it,” he told Axios on the sidelines of the RSA Conference. AI doomsday scenarios have haunted cyber pros for decades, but the introduction of generative AI hypercharged their fears. Some have predicted we’ll see autonomous cyber weapons that can evade security tools in the wild by 2027. Others predict that one day the robots will be fighting robots. Mandia founded famed cybersecurity incident response company Mandiant in the early 2000s. The type of attack Mandia is predicting will likely come from the cyber criminal side of the world, rather than nation-states, he said. Mandia added that the first iteration of any new attack style is typically “a bit sloppy” and that foreign adversaries like China are more likely to take their time before rushing to follow suit. “There is enough R&D happening right now on how to use AI [at legitimate organizations] that the criminal element is doing that R&D as well,” he said. Models from OpenAI, Anthropic and other popular AI companies aren’t likely to be involved in the attack that Mandia is predicting. Those models are “pretty darn good” at blocking such blatant violations of their safety parameters. “It’s going to come from some model that’s somewhere out there that’s less controlled,” he said. Chester Wisniewski, global field CISO at Sophos, told Axios that cyber criminals may already have the capabilities — but many of them don’t have a real incentive to tap into them yet. “Fortunately today, cyber criminals are really lazy, and because we keep leaving our wallets open with large sums of cash in them, they’re happy to just steal the money and move on and not do anything fancy,” Wisniewski said.
JFrog’s software supply chain platform integration with Nvidia to scan all components for vulnerabilities, version them and track them across the entire development lifecycle, along with end-to-end artifact and model management
Software supply chain company JFrog announced a new strategic partnership with Nvidia Corp. to power what the company calls the next era of enterprise AI. Under the partnership, JFrog’s platform will serve as the central software artifact repository and secure model registry within Nvidia’s recently unveiled Enterprise AI Factory. The initiative is designed to help enterprises build, deploy and manage next-generation AI workloads, including agentic and physical AI applications, in a secure and scalable environment. The integration between JFrog and Nvidia will allow users to gain secure and governed visibility into all software components, including ML models and engines. The components can be scanned for vulnerabilities, versioned and tracked across the entire software development lifecycle. Users will also benefit from end-to-end artifact and model management, with the ability to seamlessly pull, upload and host AI models, datasets and containers. The integration includes full support for Nvidia NIMs and other assets optimized for the Enterprise AI Factory architecture. By using JFrog Artifactory, organizations can eliminate the need to access components from external sources, improving both performance and security. The integration includes the ability for the JFrog Platform to run natively on Nvidia’s Grace Blackwell architecture to help reduce latency and process tasks with unparalleled performance, efficiency and scale. Additionally, the integration is expected to support a wide range of AI-enabled enterprise applications, agentic and physical AI workflows, autonomous decision-making and real-time data analysis across various industries, including financial services, healthcare, telecommunications, retail, media and manufacturing.
Apple is looking to make Siri a full-fledged AI chatbot liken ChatGPT; to work more deeply with apps and trigger actions
Apple’s executives are pushing for Siri to become a proper AI chatbot that scours the web, potentially as a direct competitor to ChatGPT. Such a move could eliminate reliance on OpenAI’s service for responses and keep the queries in-house. A chatbot that Apple has been reportedly testing internally for years has apparently done extremely well in the last six months. Employees claim that the internal bot is on a similar level to responses from ChatGPT. Management has also talked about the possibility of letting the chat bot the option of scouring the Internet and use data from multiple sources to create answers to queries. Refocusing efforts on making Siri work with an Apple chatbot can be beneficial to Apple beyond just making Siri smarter. For a start, a better and more powerful Siri that could answer search queries like ChatGPT could help offset some related costs. Another feature that was announced as coming to Siri but got delayed could also help. The feature of using Siri to work more deeply with apps on an iPhone could let Siri respond to queries and commands by triggering actions in apps on the user’s behalf. Such a feature would keep the App Store relevant and maintain its position as a $20 billion per year business. With the potential for chatbots to take over from apps in terms of general usage by iPhone owners, this functionality could still keep the app economy ticking over.
First Internet Bank offers “high-fidelity ACH” wherein the bank sends out test messages with each large payments file to ensure when those transactions are being received by the Federal Reserve
Standard ACH payments can still take up to four days. First Internet Bank is stepping up to fill that breach with its “high-fidelity ACH” system, wherein the bank sends out test messages with each large payments file (like a “canary in a coal mine”) to ensure when those transactions are being received by the Federal Reserve. In turn, this gives business customers a bird’s-eye view to track those transactions via an application dashboard. Hence, the bank’s business customers, such as Check and Ramp — which are piloting the service — can see exactly when payments clear, and reliably guarantee that their end customers (payroll recipients) are getting their money on time. First Internet Bank has been working with Increase for more than two years in developing and rolling out an ACH system that helps business customers continue to reliably deliver their own payments on-time while offering a clear view of how the payments are progressing on an Increase-developed application and when they hit at the receiving depository financial institution, or RDFI. There have been “a series of improvements,” according to Lorch, as the bank and the Bend, a fintech startup have refined their approach and the technology. For his part, CEO and founder of First Internet Bank’s technology partner Increase, Darragh Buckley, sees his company’s facilitation of ACH payments as more of a means of building improvement on the existing system, rather than trying to rip out the entire network and try to start anew. “No one really wants excitement in their payroll,” said Buckley, who previously was employee No. 1 at digital payments giant Stripe. “We want it all to progress boringly [so that] the payroll client knows they have done their job [and] can sleep better at night.”
BoA’s CashPro Platform reports QR sign-ins adoption surged 60% over the last year surpassing two million uses
Every day, thousands of CFOs and treasurers use QR code technology to sign-in to CashPro, Bank of America’s digital banking platform accessed by more than 40,000 corporate and commercial clients around the world to manage their treasury, trade and credit operations and perform self-service requests. The identity and authentication technology, introduced in 2022, recently surpassed two million uses and saw 60% growth in adoption over the last year[1]. “Nearly every business client uses CashPro as the front door through which they view and take action on their Bank of America accounts,” explained Jennifer Sanctis, head of CashPro App and Personalized Technologies in Global Payments Solutions at Bank of America. “QR Sign-In makes that entry point even more secure and further enhances the client experience.” The QR sign-in experience improves two key pain points associated with traditional login processes: There’s no need to remember the CashPro password. Instead, clients use their mobile phone to scan the QR code that appears on the computer screen and sign in using biometrics. There’s no need to carry a physical token. Instead, users can use the CashPro App to access the mobile token, which is integrated into the sign in flow for clients with multi-factor authentication. The popularity of this technology is highest among clients in Europe who access it more than twice as frequently as clients in other regions. Karen Davis, head of treasury and trade finance for oil & gas at Glencore, is a member of the bank’s UK CashPro Board, a group of clients who provide direct input on the platform’s functionality and future build out. Davis is a proponent and frequent user of QR sign-in. “QR sign-in makes it simple to get into CashPro. I use the mobile token security that’s built into the process too, so I don’t need to worry about carrying around a physical token. It’s so quick and convenient. I don’t know why people wouldn’t use it,” Davis said. Bank of America regularly enhances the CashPro platform through innovative new features and functionality that improve business outcomes for clients. Most recently, the bank launched Push Authentication that further simplifies the mobile token experience.
JPMorgan Chase to start offering clients access to Bitcoin ETFs to deepen its involvement in crypto markets under the current pro-crypto regulatory landscape
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said clients of the bank can now buy bitcoin, but he reiterated his long-held skepticism about cryptocurrencies. The decision marks a notable step for the largest U.S. bank, particularly due to Dimon’s history of criticizing the digital currency and the crypto market broadly, and is the latest sign of bitcoin’s entry into mainstream investing. Dimon made it clear that his personal view of bitcoin remains unchanged, highlighting issues such as money laundering and the lack of clarity surrounding ownership. The bank is looking at offering clients access to bitcoin ETFs, according to a person briefed on its plans. Until now, the company has limited its crypto exposure primarily to futures-based products, not direct ownership of bitcoin. Earlier, he had said that the investment bank is exploring ways to deepen its involvement in cryptocurrency markets, navigating the regulatory landscape under the pro-crypto administration of President Donald Trump.
FS-ISAC report asks financial firms to begin migrating most vulnerable assets to crypto agile encryption algorithms to be able to adapt quickly to the quantum age
The annual threat report from the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, or FS-ISAC, identifies key risks driven by geopolitical shifts, emerging technologies and changing criminal tactics. “The report’s findings underscore the complexity and unpredictability of today’s threat landscape,” said Steve Silberstein, CEO of the FS-ISAC said. The report found that stability and continuity of the global financial system remain under constant threat from lone hackers, organized criminal gangs and nation-state actors. However, the overall threat level globally, including for the Americas specifically, is at the lowest of the four levels FS-ISAC has in its Cyber Threat Level, or CTL. The CTL for each region is an industry barometer of cyber risk set by regional Threat Intelligence Committees, or TICs, made up of experts from FS-ISAC member firms. “The relative stability of the CTLs reflects the sector’s ability to manage the changing threat landscape,” the FS-ISAC report reads. “The overall ratings in each region were more stable than they have been in years past,” the report notes. Regardless, TICs have raised concerns about specific elements of the threat environment, which the consortium highlighted in the annual report.For a period of roughly two weeks in May 2024, the cyber threat level in the Americas region increased one level due to ongoing activity by Scattered Spider, the threat actor that compromised MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment in 2023. The report called the threat actor “credible” and “sophisticated,” adding it is believed to be based in the U.S., U.K. and Canada. FS-ISAC members voted to return the threat level from “elevated” back to “guarded” later in the month. Supply chain risk continues to be a primary worry for the financial sector worldwide, according to FS-ISAC. The industry’s significant reliance on third-party vendors increases exposure to disruptions that can have widespread impact. Recent incidents involving software vulnerabilities in common tools like XZ Utils — an open-source data compression software package widely used in almost all Linux distributions — and Managed File Transfer, or MFT, products such as Cleo and MoveIt highlight this risk. Fraud is surging across multiple sectors, targeting firms, customers and employees, according to the FS-ISAC report. “Real-time payments infrastructure, cryptocurrencies, and decentralized finance mechanisms make it virtually impossible to retrieve stolen funds,”