Online banking is a phenomenon which has become increasingly popular over the last few years. Not only have people become used to the convenience of this, as our lives continue to become more and more involved and hectic, but we have also become concerned at the new issues which this digital transformation service brings, namely security matters and identity theft.
Security is one of the chief concerns of any online banking service. There seems to be a trade off between ease of access for ourselves and preventing other people from access to our personal data. The various provisions of security seem to fall into two major areas: legislation and technology.
The legislation is handled by the various government acts which are passed from time to time related to our individual data security such as the Data Protection Act and the various measures which have been put in place (usually lagging behind the very things they are meant to address) like anti ‘phishing’ laws and the preservation of the individual’s data integrity.
The technology aspect is concerned with the efficacy of firewalls, the provision of specialist software to prevent the various malware that is designed to monitor our keyboard usage (thereby emulating the keystrokes which reveal our various passwords) and the whole sale ransacking of our hard drives and our email address books. The water is further muddied in this area because certain types of software are seen as malevolent merely because they are installed to seek out other destructive software, and so may be interpreted as ‘spyware’ by normal procedures of virus scanning, when in fact they are perfectly harmless applications usually installed by the computer owner.
But few people would disagree that, on the whole, the online banking services revolution has been of great benefit to modern societies and individuals alike. The ability of ordinary account holders to use banking software to perform what would have been thought impossible only a few years ago is now taken as a commonplace; this is due to the complex software which enables us to search our accounts, request statements, locate individual transactions, transfer money between accounts, make purchases from third party merchants and also take advantage of more esoteric aspects of banking as stock investments, currency speculating and even day trading.
Such activities used to be the preserve only of the corporate data processing professional. But nowadays anyone will be able to perform any of the above activities as long as the software provided the means of doing it. Online digital banking services are now looking towards an increasingly complex future: it is to be hoped that the security issues will keep pace as well.
that is designed to monitor our keyboard usage (thereby emulating the keystrokes which reveal our various passwords) and the whole sale ransacking of our hard drives and our email address books. The water is further muddied in this area because certain types of software are seen as malevolent merely because they are installed to seek out other destructive software, and so may be interpreted as ‘spyware’ by normal procedures of virus scanning
