Technology Credit Union to roll out PassMark two factor authentication system

Effective Wednesday, November 16, Tech CU's 62,000 online members throughout the Bay Area will log on to their accounts with a secure, mutual authentication solution that prevents phishing, key logging and man-in-the-middle attacks. By implementing this solution, Tech CU will both increase its members' confidence with Internet banking and satisfy the recent FFIEC guidelines established for all financial institutions.

The number of Americans who have experienced identity theft has surpassed 27 million, according to the American Bankers Association. "We're all acutely aware of the rise in online fraud and identity theft, and the inadequacy of password protection for online transactions," said Mike Luckin, senior vice-president, Delivery Systems.

The PassMark system provides secure two-factor authentication and anti-fraud filtering with a unique approach that uses the customer's own computer as the physical credential. By remotely identifying individual computers, it achieves two-factor security without requiring the user to have or carry any new tokens, cards or readers.

In addition, each Tech CU member will be given a secret PassMark - consisting of a small image and a phrase created by the member - that Tech CU will subsequently display to the member during log in. "With the PassMark system, our members can be certain they are logging into the real Tech CU website, just as we can be certain the user is the real credit union member," said Victor Smilgys, AVP, e-Commerce.

"Tech CU's members will now be able to easily and confidently ascertain that they are at their real credit union's site and similarly, Tech CU will have increased confidence that the real member is accessing their account," said Steve Klebe, vice president of sales and business development for PassMark Security. "The beauty of our solution is that it offers strong mutual authentication without requiring the user to have any new hardware or install any new software. And we don't make clients chose between two-factor or back-end security - we give them both."

Tech CU will use PassMark's real-time transaction monitoring to further increase its online security. This back-end capability analyzes transactions as they happen and gives financial institutions decision-making tools that can spot and stop threats before it is too late. The system can even identify new emerging attacks, not just known ones, using a state-of-the-art analysis technology called "neural networks." Combining the PassMark two-factor two-way technology with this back-end analytic technology provides long-term protection from evolving threats.