Trusteer, the customer protection company for online businesses, today announced that last year 10 financial institutions selected its Rapport browser security product to protect online customers from crime schemes.
Continuing its momentum in 2009, the company also announced that Central Bank, a regional bank in Kentucky, is its newest customer.
Rapport is now being offered as a free download to more than 15 million consumers worldwide by seven banks in the US, Canada, and UK, two credit unions, and one brokerage firm.
The Trusteer Rapport product secures personally identifiable information (PII) when users conduct business online with financial institutions and other goods and services providers. It acts like a vault inside a user's web browser to protect online transactions from malicious software resident on customer computers, prevents redirection to fraudulent websites, and locks down communications during transmission.
"Protecting customers' personally identifiable information when they are banking online with us is a top priority for Central Bank," said Luther Deaton, CEO of Central Bank. "Trusteer's Rapport product enables us to offer our customers a free and transparent security mechanism that protects them and the bank from a myriad of internet crime schemes including keystroke loggers as well as phishing and pharming attacks. We like the fact that it's so easy to download and install, and provides an extra measure of confidence and protection for online users of our services."
New Approach to Security Threats and Privacy Protection
Financial institutions are under growing pressure from regulatory and privacy acts around the world, including the latest federal trade commission (FTC) Identity Theft Red Flag rules, to protect PII. Meanwhile, criminal schemes including PII-stealing malware and redirect attacks are growing at astronomical rates. Traditional security measures, including strong and out-of-band authentication, are unable to prevent most forms of PII theft. In 2008, banks and other financial institutions began recognizing they need to address the problem with a new approach, which helped establish Trusteer as the leader in the online PII protection space.
"In 2008 financial institutions, especially banks, really started getting serious about finding a way to protect customers and their personally identifiable information during web transactions," said Mickey Boodaei, CEO of Trusteer. "Signing 10 customers in less than 12 months was a major accomplishment for Trusteer. The fact that financial institutions want to increase web self service to cut customer support costs and crime schemes are getting more difficult to stop, puts us in excellent position for 2009. Our pipeline entering the new year is very strong."
Rapport from Trusteer is a lightweight browser plug-in that acts like a vault inside the browser. It protects PII and web pages from unauthorized access and theft while users are accessing sensitive websites. Trusteer also offers in-the-cloud reporting services where unauthorized access attempts detected by Rapport are analyzed by fraud experts who provide actionable intelligence to financial institutions.