SiteKey is free and involves customers picking one of thousands of images, writing a brief phrase and selecting three challenge questions to establish their identity. Then both the customer and the bank can pass that information securely back and forth to confirm each other’s identity whenever correspondence online is entered into.
When logging on to bankofamerica.com, customers can check the authenticity of the site by clicking on the SiteKey button to reveal their personal image and phrase. If the image and phrase don’t appear, the customer will be alerted to the possibility that the site may be fraudulent. The personal question provides a second level of security that cannot be electronically stolen.
SiteKey helps you know it’s us and we know it’s you, said Sanjay Gupta, eCommerce executive. It’s a free way to increase your online security, and it’s easy because you don’t need extra hardware or other equipment.
From the middle of July, customers in North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia will be able to use the new system to help prevent fraud and identity theft.
Bank of America, which is the US industry leader in online banking with more than 13.4 million subscribers and 6.5 million people who pay bills online, added in a press release that the new system will be rolled out to the rest of the US over the remaining months of the year.
Increasing customer confidence in online security applications has become a key challenge in the current banking industry environment. With identify theft on the increase recent trends have shown that many banking customers have become wary of using online services and need reassurance of the effectiveness of security measures.
Bank of America has suffered from two high profile security events this year. In February, it lost data tapes containing personal information on 1.2 million federal employees and in May security was compromised when a plot was uncovered to steal details of thousands of the bank’s customer accounts.
