The wholly-owned subsidiary of Old Second Bancorp (NASDAQ: OSBC) will offer its commercial customers award-winning IronKey Trusted Access that helps prevent online account takeover, identity theft and payments fraud.

Industry analyst firm Gartner estimates cyber criminals have robbed banks, businesses, and municipalities of more than $3 billion. Trusted Access also allows the bank to meet and exceed new Federal Financial Institutions Examinations Council (FFIEC) guidance to reduce the risk of online banking fraud.

"We want to educate our customers about the nature of online threats and protect them where cyber criminals launch their attacks, at their own PCs," said James Eccher, president and CEO of Old Second National Bank. "Old Second Bank's Trusted Access service is an affordable online security solution that helps protect customers even if criminals have managed to install crimeware on their PC. We see it as both a way to enhance and strengthen our services to the community, and add a competitive advantage that can also help us win new business."

The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) estimates that 39 percent of all computers are infected with financial malware designed to steal account information. Today's anti-malware software fails to detect these threats at least 75 percent of the time according to real-time research from SpyEye Tracker(1). As a result, online banking account takeovers are growing at over 150 percent per year based on research recently published by FS-ISAC (Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center).

With Trusted Access, customers know they are accessing an authentic site and that their transactions are not being monitored or tampered with by criminals. Old Second Bank is first offering this new service to their business customers, building on the bank's commitment to providing their business clients with the highest level of security and personalized service. The secure browser is one part of the IronKey Trusted Access Platform that provides financial institutions with multiple layers of security integrated to dramatically reduce the risk of online banking fraud. The secure browser approach is recognized by industry expert Gartner, Inc. as one of most critical security controls for preventing online banking fraud.

Unlike other approaches, Trusted Access assumes a client's computer is already infected with the latest zero-day attack that would go undetected by anti-virus and other software technologies. Trusted Access provides a secure Web browser protected in a fully virtualized, read-only environment tailored to protect online banking sessions from known and unknown crimeware. Even if a computer is infected with malware, the online banking session remains safe, secure, and private. IronKey's solution includes the Trusted Access portable secure USB device, which launches a protected, virtualized operating system and Web browser that will only work with IronKey's Trusted Network, and when deployed, only allows the end user to access bank-approved sites from the secure browser.

"With the IronKey Trusted Access, Old Second Bank is providing its customers with security recognized by new federal guidelines as an effective means to prevent online banking," said Arthur Wong, CEO of IronKey. "The bank is taking the lead in their market by offering its customers proactive security against malicious criminal attacks costing the industry billions each year."