To what extent is internet banking safe Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

To what extent is internet banking safe - Essay Example Hackers look for online retailers with large customer base and poor security to obtain their usernames and passwords to access their financial information. Most customers fall prey to emails that appear to be send by their bank but steal the customers’ passwords by leading them to fraudulent websites. Keylogging is a process through which all strokes of a password are tracked by a virus while the password is being entered. It can breach personal computers’ defences. Ordinary web users can fend off such software with having latest versions of anti-virus software installed and extra-thick internet firewalls. Hackers use latest technology to surpass their barriers and many users overlook regular computer checks. In order to deal with these threats, online banks avoid connecting to the internet directly. Instead, they use firewall technology to protect their computer system from unauthorized access. Many online banks hire outside security experts so as to ensure that their systems are secure internally and externally against the experts’ attempts to make unauthorized attacks. If a user forgets logging off while the banking session has been inactive for a certain duration which is usually few minutes, the online bank ends the session for the user. The information can thus not be accessed in the terminated account. The user needs to give the User ID and Password to resume the banking session again. Security systems commonly employed by online banks can be categorized into two types; software based systems and hardware based systems. In the software based systems, information is coded and decoded with the help of specialized security software. These systems are in abundance in the market because of their ease of distribution and portability. Security systems based on software employ encryption as the main method. Encryption modifies information so that it becomes unreadable till the process is reversed. Online banks use Secured Socket Layer (SSL) encryption to provide their users with safe online transaction services. Messages in each session are encrypted with a unique master key. Encryption is a process of communication in which the private information is scrambled to deter unauthorized access during the transmission of information from the user’s browser to the bank. The master key used for a particular session is wasted once the user has signed off because it was only meant for one session. Users need an internet browser which supports the encryption of 128 bits before they can login to the internet banking (FirstBank, 2013). This ensures use of the highest security level. Some examples of the current encryption technology include digital signature, pretty good privacy (PGP), and Kerberos (Yang, 1997). A digital signature transforms a signed message so that the sender is recognizable to the reader. A private key is used to sign the messages which are then verified with a public