Standard Bank has become the last major commercial bank to introduce SMS security for its Internet banking clients, although it was the first to upgrade security following the Absa hacker scare four months ago.
All the other major commercial banks have introduced SMS security, in one form or another, over the past 18 months. Nedcor was the first, followed by First National Bank and then Absa, which introduced it as part of its Internet banking security upgrade after a Bellville man allegedly defrauded a number of its Internet banking clients.
Standard Bank was the first major commercial bank to offer free anti-virus and firewall software to its clients after the Absa hacker scare. However, it did not immediately include the SMS feature.
A Standard Bank spokesman says the bank had been planning to implement an SMS service for some time but that other issues were higher on the priority list.
"We plan to keep doing security enhancements to stay at least one step ahead of the criminal minds," he says.
Most banks use the short message service to either inform clients that their accounts are being accessed, or to confirm that certain payments are being made, or that there has been a change in beneficiaries.
Standard Bank Internet banking customers will now be able to receive an SMS notification for logon, profile amendments, addition of new beneficiaries and amending of existing beneficiaries.
Standard Bank also recently launched a calculator-type pin-pad for customers doing Internet banking. This feature randomly "scrambles" the pin-pad to produce 3.6 million variations of the pad, and eliminates keystroke and mouse-click logging.
Share