The new version gives financial institutions and their customers unprecedented protection against phishing, spoofing, keyboard logging and other fraudulent attacks.

The new version, which has been in live production at certain customers since this summer, adds two significant new components - a forensics engine, which employs neural network modeling, and a policy engine, which provides real-time decision-making for customer authentication.

Neural networks modeling refers to a class of data analysis techniques especially useful for real-time decision-making. Neural networks learn as they go, organizing and generalizing information so they can predict new and emerging behavioral patterns, not just react to what has happened before.

"Fraudsters are creative and resourceful, continually modifying their schemes to escape detection. Our use of neural network technology will help keep our clients ahead of fraudsters, spotting threats never before seen and reacting as they happen, before it is too late," said Bill Harris, founder and chairman of PassMark Security.

The second important extension to the system, the policy engine, enables financial institutions to precisely customize decisions about authentication and transactions using information coming from the forensics engine, the PassMark two-factor authentication and other sources.

PassMark's version 2.0 modeling team, led by chief scientist William Wright, has extensive experience in the commercial application of neural networks. Wright's achievements in neural network technology include his work as one of the principal architects responsible for the original design and development of Falcon Fraud Manager, the leading fraud detection system used in the credit card industry.

The PassMark system provides two-way, two-factor authentication.

Two-Factor Authentication. The PassMark system delivers strong authentication by remotely identifying a customer's computers, and using them as "second-factor" authenticating hardware. In this way, strong security is achieved without requiring the customer to install any new software or carry any new identifying hardware, such as smart cards or other tokens.

Two-Way Authentication. Each online customer receives a "PassMark" - a secret image and text known only to the bank and that customer. When a customer sees his (or her) secret PassMark on an email or Web site, he instantly knows he is dealing with the real ecommerce provider, not an imposter.

Recent Statistics on Identity Theft and Online Fraud

• Merchandise and services obtained with illegally acquired personal identification exceeded $52 billion in 2004, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
• Symantec, a provider of anti-virus software, recently announced that viruses designed to capture confidential information made up three quarters of the top 50 viruses, worms and Trojans during the first six months of 2005, up from 54% in the last six months of 2004.
• FBI data shows the number of Internet-related credit card crime reports rose 66% in 2004 and the average reported loss associated with the online scams tripled to $2,400 from $800 in 2003.
• The Anti-phishing Working Group has reported a recent significant increase in Password Stealing Malicious code identified on machines, up over 2x since April alone.