Online Banking Customers Support Stronger Security

By Janet Harris

According to the fourth annual Financial Institution Consumer Online Fraud Survey by RSA Security Inc, the security division of USA-based EMC Corporation, 91% of bank account holders would be willing to use stronger security methods than the standard ‘username-and-password’, to protect their accounts.

When given a choice of possible security measures, including hardware tokens, personalised images, and risk-based authentication, 73% of those surveyed said they would prefer their bank to use risk-based authentication.

Risk-based authentication aims to provide strong security with little impact on users. It involves a behind the scenes assessment of the user’s identity. Factors such as log-on location, IP address and transaction behaviour are assessed and, if necessary, supplemented with out-of-band phone calls or secret questions for transactions that are assessed as high-risk.

Globally, 40% of those surveyed said they would like to use a hardware token for authentication. This method was particularly popular in European and Asia Pacific countries such as Spain, Germany, Singapore and India, with between 46% and 50% saying they would like to use tokens.