Making Transfers with Your Fingertip

01.03.2008
Biometrics for Safe Banking over the Internet

The popularity of online banking is on the rise. Initiating transactions from the comfort of your PC offers considerable time advantages in terms of flexibility and convenience. The downside, however, is that the combination of PlNs and TANs is no longer able to provide sufficient protection against fraudulent hackers or phishing attacks. In response, a biometric internet ID card now allows banking customers to use fingerprints to unambiguously identify themselves on the web.

39% of all Germans are already conducting their banking on the internet. According to a recent study by Forrester Research, this share is expected to climb to 47% by 2012. The growing acceptance of online banking has good reasons: the internet is open around the clock, there is no waiting in line, and doing your banking online is cheaper than at a branch office. But as the volume of online banking increases, so does the threat of hacker attacks. According to Germany's Federal Office of Criminal Investigations, German bank customers suffered losses totalling more than 14 million as a result of phishing and man-in-the-middle attacks in 2007 alone.

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Security+Management - Making Transfers with Your Fingertip