Among a swath of other news at TD’s annual TD Tech Day event in Toronto, the bank announced a new 9,000 square foot facility called the TD Fusion Centre that will serve as the enterprise’s threat defense hub.
The staff at the facility – which will be a combination of experts in cybersecurity, fraud management, incident response, investigations, physical security, legal and compliance – will be tasked with improving the detection and prevention of enterprise threats, proactively identifying new threats, and better enabling an incident response capability for the enterprise.
TD says it hopes to attract cybersecurity talent as well.
“Safeguarding our customers’ trust is a top priority,” Clark Smith, TD’s head of cyber fraud threat management, said in a press release. “Bringing together diverse expertise from across our organization will help enable us to boost intelligence detection capabilities, enhance incident response speed and realize faster and more efficient mitigation, which we believe will enable us to be more predictive and proactive in the evolving cyber threat landscape.”
The facility will feature the Development Automation Analysis Research and Testing Environment (DART) Room, which will allow investigators to perform testing in an environment that simulates a recreation of TD’s enterprise IT environment, and The Forensic Room, which will be used to dissect evidence and build an effective chain of custody while conducting cyber investigations.
TD adding AI-powered financial advice to its app, among other announcements
TD Bank Group is bringing AI-powered financial advice to its app with its new MyTD feature.
Leveraging AI models from Layer 6 – the AI startup that was acquired by TD in January 2018 – customers will be given personalized and contextual financial advice based on their spending patterns and account balances.
“As more of our customers engage with us through our digital platforms, we are evolving to provide more personalized experiences across all our channels and the MyTD experience will be a significant evolution of our digital customer journey to date,” said Rizwan Khalfan, TD’s chief digital and payments officer, said in a press release. “Combining the power of AI with our mobile app will help us anticipate customers’ needs so we can provide the right information at the right time in a seamless way – with the goal of helping customers feel more confident about their financial decisions.”
This new feature follows other recent additions to TD’s digital offerings such as TD My Spend, its spending tracker feature, and TD Clari, its AI-powered chatbot, as well as other tech developments like its new credit card blocking features, and its selection of Microsoft Azure as its cloud provider.
TD helping cleantech startups
An expansion to TD’s Patents for Startups program – which helps startups in the seed stage through the patent process via funding and consulting – will now see it helping cleantech startups with their patents in collaboration with TD Sustainable Future Lab accelerator in Waterloo.
Unlike similar programs, through this program, startups will be the sole owners of the patents and retain all rights to the underlying technology.
“This next phase of the patents program is our latest step towards helping young Canadian innovators thrive,” said Josh Death, TD’s intellectual property and patentable innovations lead, in a press release. “Welcoming cleantech startups to the program will help Canadian talent be leaders in addressing some of the world’s most pressing problems.”
The first startup accepted to the program is Advanced Materials & Propulsion Engineering & Research (AMPERe), an Oakville-based firm developing a more cost-efficient and environmentally-friendly single stroke combustion engine.
Analytics for non-profits
A new initiative from TD called TD Mindpower: Analytics for Social Good, which completed a pilot project in the spring of 2019, was announced to help non-profits leverage analytics to improve their community reach.
Non-profits will have access to a team of TD data and analytics employees who will be volunteering their time to help those organizations discover new insights in their data.
“Data and analytics will be key to our economy, and the ability to turn data into insights is critical for both organizations and individuals to thrive in the future,” says Peter Husar, Vice President, Analytics Strategy and Planning, Enterprise Data and Analytics, TD. “We’ve made great progress in how we use data to serve our customers better, and we’re committed to using our expertise to support our communities as well. Through TD Mindpower, non-profit organizations can access advanced data analytics capabilities to help grow their community impact in a sustainable way, and our colleagues gain meaningful professional experience through skills-based volunteering.”
