Trust in Online Security Wanes

January 30th, 2007: EMC’s RSA Security has released data from a new online security survey where, unsurprisingly, the main response theme was ‘ditch usernames and passwords.’

According to RSA, consumers reckon usernames and passwords must go with 91 percent of account holders willing to use stronger authentication methods for their online finances. With so many security breeches and blunders gracing the news, it’s also hardly surprising that trust in online banking services is dropping, with 52 percent of those surveyed “less likely” to sign-up for or use online banking.

The findings have surfaced as part of RSA’s fourth annual Financial Institution Consumer Online Fraud Survey. Conducted in December 2006, RSA says that the online survey asked 1,678 adults from Australia and seven other countries around the world for their opinions on evolving fraud threats such as phishing, vishing and keylogging, and the security measures being put into place.

The survey found that:

• 91 percent of account-holders are willing to start using a new authentication methods if their banks decided to offer stronger security.
• 73 percent said that they would like their financial institution to use risk-based authentication.
• 69 percent believe that financial institutions should replace username-and-password log-in with stronger authentication for online banking.
• 58 percent believe that financial institutions should deploy stronger authentication for telephone banking.
• 82 percent would like their banks to monitor online banking sessions and telephone banking sessions for signs of irregular activity or behavior – similar to the way that credit card transactions are monitored today.
• While many financial institutions have begun moves to deploy stronger authentication over the past year, only 39 percent of account-holders are aware of it.
• Less than 70 percent of respondents in Australia (65 percent) claimed to be familiar with the term ‘phishing’ – compared to 83 percent in the US.

Alongside these findings, RSA also discovered that 82% of those surveyed are “less likely to respond” to banking-related e-mails, so perhaps the fight against phishing is starting to show results. This also means, however, that trust is indeed on the way down with 44 percent of account-holders reporting that they have become increasingly concerned about other types of attacks (besides phishing), such as Trojans and keyloggers, over the past six months.

Comment on this story