Coined by the FBI as the "hottest and most troubling Internet scam," phishing has cost banks more than $1.2 billion and has affected more than 57 million online users, according to Gartner Group.

"Phishing is uncovering the vulnerabilities of online banking and ecommerce, but banks can take action now to protect their brand and their customers," said Ben Barnes, ActivCard Chief Executive Officer. "Our solutions can efficiently address this problem and rapidly restore confidence among consumers and businesses alike, increasing loyalty while protecting revenue."

Solutions:

The Token Protected Online Consumer Banking solution adds immediate password protection for online customers through a time-limited, one-time use password. This solution is targeted at banks and e-tailers looking for an easy to deploy solution to rapidly fend off the threat of phishing and is one of the most economical token-based solutions on the market.

The second solution uses Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), the ActivCard Universal Serial Bus (USB) Key, smart cards, and ActivClient middleware to support high value, high risk transactions for commercial banking customers. With this solution, organizations and business customers can authenticate to each other through a trusted third party, and then establish an extremely secure transaction.

"By offering a range of solutions from a token-based solution to the advanced PKI solution, ActivCard encompasses the various needs of financial organizations and online retailers," said Mehdi Bermy, solutions marketing manager at ActivCard. "Our open-standard technology provides lower cost of ownership, accelerating the return on investment."

Solutions from ActivCard are easy to implement and scalable, ensuring rapid integration in a cost effective yet thorough way. While providing essential security features such as two-factor authentication to the service, the solutions specifically offer protection against phishing attacks: copy or access to digital identity secrets, password replay, man-in-the-middle threat, or rogue web service.

The Token-Protected Online Consumer Banking Solution is a proven, rapidly deployed, and convenient security solution providing banks with the full benefits of online commerce. Hosted within the bank's infrastructure, the solution allows banks to confidently identify their users by using one time password tokens coupled with ActivCard's Authentication SDK. The Token-Protected Online Consumer Banking solution is built with proven technology that empowers financial institutions to provide secure remote banking services from anywhere around the globe, allowing banks to significantly reduce major losses due to phishing and other fraud. Today, more than 3.5 million e-banking users around the globe are authenticating themselves with ActivCard tokens including customers like Zagrebacka Banka, PKOBP, Banque Sarasin, HypoBank, among others.

The Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) Solution utilizes a third party certificate authority, housed within the bank's infrastructure or through a trusted third party, to authenticate communications between the company and its commercial customers, reducing the ability of phishers to create a fraud scenario. In addition to providing trusted identification, PKI authentication allows banks to conduct commerce online. Working with the ActivClient(TM) middleware and ActivCard Card Management System (CMS), the PKI Authentication solution delivers a complete trusted third party solution that protects customers' identity. This solution is available with all appropriate forms of devices from ActivCard, in particular ActivCard USB Key and ActivCard USB Key Java, that support comprehensive managed digital identity and consolidated credentials, offering all the power of an advanced PKI solution packed in a simple portable form.