Retail Banking - Strong Authentication

Executive summary:

Consumer banking services that were once provided in person can now be delivered at a fraction of the cost using electronic channels. This decrease in cost, however, comes with an increase in risk, as it exposes financial institutions to outside threats such as fraudsters. Fraudsters target and exploit electronic channels for financial gain, most commonly targeting customers’ personal passwords in order to gain unauthorized access to their accounts before stealing the funds within them.
As these attacks on financial institutions evolve, customer confidence deteriorates. Meanwhile, as banks struggle to protect against these attacks, their performance becomes encumbered with rising administrative costs, thus discouraging the adoption and implementation of more efficient electronic systems. It is a vicious cycle.
As the means of fraud evolve, financial organizations simply must evolve with them. It is incumbent upon banks to update their outdated and obsolete security methods (such as personal passwords) with stronger, more current forms of authentication.

VASCO offers a variety of strong authentication solutions for the consumer electronic banking market, including:

Software-only authentication
Mobile authentication
SMS authentication
One-button hardware authenticators
Smart cards

Goal:

VASCO’s strong authentication solutions are a key step in increasing the adoption of electronic channels and reinstating customers' trust in the banking system. As security attacks diminish, customer retention, asset growth, transaction volume, and revenue will be favorably influenced right along with it.

Threats:

One of the main obstacles facing electronic consumer banking is a prolific and growing customer base utilizing insecure devices over an insecure network. It is this dilemma that is nearly impossible to combat, and it will only worsen as broadband access makes the hijacking of information increasingly possible. Phishing attacks, Trojan horses, keystroke loggers, and other malware are being distributed online through advertising networks, emails, and free downloadable items. These constant attacks on security have become a reality of our daily lives.

Benefits:

VASCO offers mature technologies that have minimal impact on IT architecture. Through years of experience in some of the world’s largest deployments, VASCO solutions have been refined to complement existing security policies.

Benefits include:

Unlimited Scalability:

Easy to add more users and/or applications without the need to rebuild the back-end infrastructure
9,000+ authentications per second
No additional or backup servers and maintenance
No dedicated disaster recovery

User-Friendliness

As a family concept, all form factors are supported in every installation
Ability to match the device’s level of security to the need of a particular risk group

Low Total Cost Per Customer

Single back-end platform
Native integration
No need for separate authentication server and replicas
No need for separate authentication database
Future-proof solution

Additional Features:

Branding
Customizable hardware authenticators present an excellent opportunity to extend brand presence with your online customers.
Deployment
VASCO offers a range of flexible deployment services, including packaging design and production, inventory, and secure mailing to end-users.

Approach:

Based on the financial institution’s existing architecture, VASCO’s back-end platform is integrated into one or more customer-facing applications. VASCO has existing partnerships with a broad range of vendors in the portal, single sign-on, and banking applications markets.