To help keep clients protected from hackers, phishers and other online predators, online discount broker TradeKing today announced it has launched a new line of security that is unprecedented in the brokerage industry.
Beginning immediately, TradeKing clients will experience a new log-in process featuring "multi-factor authentication" that will act in essence as a five layer shield against online criminals.
"TradeKing's goal is to provide clients with the very best online trading experience available anywhere, and a large part of that is having the highest possible level of security applied to their online accounts," said Don Montanaro, CEO of TradeKing. "We are proud to be the first broker-dealer to install these security features and believe we are making clients assets significantly safer as a result. Our clients deserve nothing less."
TradeKing's multi-factor authentication process uses a combination of features that work in concert to create a significant barrier to illegal activity. It consists of five key elements:
- An On-Screen Keypad: This anti-phishing measure thwarts "keyloggers" by avoiding the use of the keyboard altogether for password entry. Thus, keylogging devices which capture keystrokes will not record an individual's password.
- A Secure Image/Watermark/Site ID: These are names for the same thing; an image selected by the user and placed next to the onscreen keypad. If a user does not see or does not recognize the image they should not enter their password.
- Three Secret Questions: A customer will be required to choose three questions from a pool of twelve. Once the question is selected the customer will then type in the answer to the question. The questions will be displayed as images to prevent illegal screen-scraping tactics.
- One Account-based Question: All account-holders will be presented with a question about their account profile information.
- Device Authentication: This feature is used to "tag" customers' preferred computers or devices. This allows for the possibility for simple authentication on known devices. The customer's primary device can be "cookied" so that they can access their account without using multi-factor authentication.
"It should take clients only a minute or two to set up their new, more secure log-in," said Rick Little, director of product management for TradeKing. "Once it has been set, then it's business as usual, but with an added level of comfort. We believe our approach will quickly become the industry standard for log-in security."=