2011 FFIEC Authentication Guidance: A New Standard For Online Banking Security

The update to the FFIEC Guidance on Authentication in an Internet Banking Environment, released in June 2011, sets a new standard for online banking security. Since the last update in 2005, the online banking threat landscape has changed dramatically, creating a significant gap between the FFIEC recommendations and those security measures that are actually effective in mitigating online banking fraud. As a result, financial institutions and their customers are at risk and fraud rates have spiked.

This whitepaper provides an overview of the updated Guidance as well as the threat landscape which helped define it. This whitepaper also examines why the security measures specified in the 2005 Guidance are no longer effective, and why methods like out-of-band authentication with transaction verification are key to protecting online banking today.