Bank of New Zealand Begins Rollout of Entrust IdentityGuard to Help Combat Phishing and Boost Online Banking Usage
Over 38,000 Customers Have Registered to Use the New Service in Three Months
26 Jul 2006
DALLAS - With the increasing prevalence of sophisticated phishing scams, Bank of New Zealand was looking for a security solution that would help enable customers to have increased confidence in using Internet Banking. While a password system was in place, there was a risk that phishing emails could spoof the site and pry sensitive information from customers - all under the guise of legitimacy. The Bank also wanted a way to protect customers against trojan attacks, online tracking tools, key stroke loggers and man-in-the-middle attacks. In a proactive move, Bank of New Zealand has made Entrust IdentityGuard from Entrust, Inc. (Nasdaq: ENTU - News) available to personal customers to provide a strong mutual authentication capability. In the first three months, the Bank has had more than 38,000 customers register for the new service branded "NetGuard", and this is without any special promotion.
The overwhelming early uptake of NetGuard by our customers demonstrates they understand the benefits of having second factor authentication security says Shona Bishop, Bank of New Zealand General Manager Marketing.
Bank of New Zealand sees a number of benefits in using Entrust's IdentityGuard for its second factor solution:
- It allows customers to better identify that they have reached the authentic Internet banking site;
- By using NetGuard at the logon stage, customers' information and banking transaction history is protected as well as any transactions completed within the session;
- The Bank's potential exposure to fraud via Internet banking is reduced.
According to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, 51 percent of phishing URLs contain some derivative of the legitimate site name in them. Because the Entrust IdentityGuard solution allows financial institutions to give a piece of information to the user that is not commonly known or retrieved through other means, it can provide mutual authentication for both the customer and the institution.
"Financial institutions can reap a great deal of reward from customers moving the bulk of their transactions online - but only if they can overcome the hurdle of both real and perceived security risks," said Entrust Senior Vice President of Marketing Kevin Simzer. "Bank of New Zealand's proactive approach to providing additional customer security and confidence is something we're starting to see across the industry."
Bank of New Zealand considered other two-factor authentication solutions but chose the Entrust solution based on its ease of use, mobility and convenience for customers. An added bonus was the significantly lower cost per user, which helped enable the Bank to provide NetGuard free-of-charge.
"We wanted our solution to be inclusive and able to be used anywhere in New Zealand, and around the world. There's value in NetGuard for all of our customers, as it can help safeguard not only funds but personal information as well. Being able to offer NetGuard to our customers is something we are very proud of and cements our position as a leading financial services provider in our market," says Ms. Bishop.
Entrust IdentityGuard is a comprehensive strong authentication platform for Internet and enterprise applications. This suite of strong authentication capabilities can help enable organizations to take a risk-based approach to tailoring a security deployment. The flexible deployment options can enable organizations to match strong authentication methods to the level of risk they have determined to be associated with the different types of users, transactions and applications in their environments.
Bank of New Zealand is a subsidiary of the National Australia Bank Group of companies.