February 7, 2007 by tim.

In the 2/6/07 edition of E-Commerce Times, Andrew Rolfe has published an article that discusses ways to use out-of-band authentication to secure online transactions. He defines this as “the use of two separate networks working simultaneously to authenticate a user.” The practice of two-factor authentication has certainly received much press, but out-of-band authentication is a relatively new concept.

Mr. Rolfe discusses the increased sophistication of criminals, particularly through the proliferation of malware and phishing. He describes how out-of-band authentication for activities such as online financial transactions can be used to thwart criminal activities. In particular, he describes how some financial institutions now use the telephone network as out-of-band authentication for certain types of transactions such as balance transfers. The article is a good read if you want to stay up on the latest ideas in this industry.

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February 6, 2007 by tim.

In the latest issue of The Green Sheet, David H. Press writes about the increased scrutiny to expect in 2007 from the credit card associations. He cites a Visa announcement that states: “By combining both incentives and fines, we expect acquirers to increase their efforts with merchants to accelerate their progress toward becoming PCI-compliant and eliminating the storage of sensitive card data. Nothing is more important to Visa than securing commerce.”