The Modern Day Bank Robbery

Earlier this week, we discussed many of the security concerns that face the financial industry today. Issues like corporate espionage and data breaches might keep CEOs and IT folks up at night, but the average consumer tends to sleep pretty easily. Those events make for dramatic front-page news but it seldom hits home for regular people.

However, when it comes to banking, everybody is concerned. Security concerns still keep many consumers from banking online, which has begun to affect the entire industry:

“Leading financial institutions experienced a huge surge in the number of security attacks over the past year, specifically from external sources, according to the Deloitte 2006 Global Security Survey released Monday. …[M]ore than three-quarters (78 percent, up from 26 percent in 2005) of the world’s leading 150 institutions surveyed confirmed a security breach from outside the organization.” (CIO India)

At this point, consumers who resist online banking have some pretty good reasons: phishing and vulnerability to hacking, for example. Unfortunately, local bank branches don’t always present a great alternative.

While the old fashioned bank heist seems to live on in movies and TV, it’s becoming a thing of the past as criminals discover new ways to breach a bank’s security. One of the most common problems is human error or simple negligence. Check out this man’s tale of how one hapless bank employee gave him everything short of a handwritten invitation to rob the place:

“I just went to the bank to make a wire transfer. The guy who dealt with me was almost completely clueless; he spent 10 minutes trying to find my account details despite having my access card in his hand, and spent another 10 minutes trying to figure out how the wire transfer screen worked. Finally he gave up and went to get help. He left me alone in his office, with his computer unlocked and logged into both the bank mainframe and the bank intranet. He left me there for 10 minutes.” (Be Lambic or Be Green)

The average bank employee does not, of course, intend to put customers’ money and personal information at risk. But the fact is that they can.

Centralized computing strengthens security for both traditional and online banks. Sensitive data can be secured in a limited-access room, and administrators can control whether or not peripherals such as external hard drives or thumb drives can download information. In addition, administrators have more control over encryption, LAN access privileges, security updates, and other measures to ensure the safety of data as it travels over the network. The result is a more secure environment, both on site and online, for the bank and its customers.