by Keith Lubsen

The next speakers on the agenda were Carl Snyder, Senior Vice President Director and Preston Wood, Chief Information Security Officer both from Zions Internet Bank (www.ZionsBank.com).

At the beginning of their presentation they put forth a statistic that seemed incredibly interesting to me. They said that the amount stolen by the average physical bank robber is between $500 and $1,000 US.  This amount may seem like a lot to some, but the risk taken by a physical bank robber is great (e.g., they are likely to get physically pursued by police).

A cybercriminal, on the other hand, takes comparably little risk by remotely gaining access to just one wealthy users account and can steal hundreds of thousands of dollars or more.  This statistic made it very clear how import online banking security has become.

Security steps taken by Zions Bank include:
• Strong authorization (both that the user sees and non-visible measures that the bank monitors).
• Account monitoring systems – computer systems that detect activity that is not normal activity on individual accounts.

Carl and Preston’s presentation made it clear that Zions Bank spends a great deal of resources making sure that their online bank and its customers are safe from cybercrime.  They are well versed on the ‘Red Flags Rule’ which went into effect November 1st, 2008 as well as other fraud fighting laws and technologies.

Thank you to the Utah AG’s office: Mark Shurtleff, Scott Morrill, Rich Hamp, John Kimball and everyone else at the Utah Office of The Attorney General for their tireless and outstanding work in the fight against identity theft.