on October 8th, 2006

More banks are now investing heavily into high tech defense than ever before. For financial institutions such as banks, a breach of such information would result in not only the customer info being compromised but also loss of goodwill.

According to a study by Trusted Network Technologies Inc., more than 5,000 incidents of unauthorized information access occur each month at financial institutions. It is because of this reason that banks in the US are now joining the Financial Institution Security Officers Association - which brings banks and law enforcement agencies together.

Members share information about various scams and steps that could be taken to prevent them. Apart from Viruses unauthorized access, theft of Laptops and theft of information cause the most problem.

It is to deal with such problems that FBI has a program called InfraGard, which started in 1996, serves as a resource for both the FBI and private companies to deal with issues of information security. Through frequent meetings FBI and the private sector share valuable information and InfraGard focuses on Internet security, network security, identity theft and computer intrusion.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) requires its member banks to carry out risk assessments, policies and procedures, and implement firewalls, antivirus protection, vulnerability systems, content filtering and scanning. The FDIC also requires all Internet banking to use multi-factor authentication from January onwards.

How many banks will be in a position to comply with these stricter guidelines - that insists on more than user name and password to keep customer information safe - remains to be seen.

One other group of users that is convinced of having to better their security setup is hospitals and health care services. One of the biggest challenges is keeping information safe during remote access.

Connecting from remote locations invariably leave a considerable amount of private information on the network. Often times, more information resides on the servers than on the remote laptops themselves. This could be use to compromise a persons position or even file fraudulent claims.