Online Banking Security on the Internet

Doing Online Banking Securely on the Web

Web and Internet users should be aware that the Internet was never designed to be secure. It was designed by the U.S. Department of Defense in the 1970's to be an open and robust network that could survive a nuclear attack. Any security that exists today on the Internet for e-commerce, credit card processing and online banking is built on an inherently insecure computer networking platform. Online banking services such as those provided by Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase enjoy touting to their their customers how secure their online banking platforms are. For practical purposes, the level of data protection provided by encrypted secure online banking transactions does provide a relatively high level of data security, but in reality, customer online banking accounts as they exist today are only as secure as the password. In terms of online network security, providing simple password protection for an online bank account is not a security authentication mechanism that experts would consider as providing a high level of security and should certainly NOT be advertised to banking customers as highly secure in such an especially brazen way.

Windows 7 Security

Here are a few simple recommendations to help improve windows security for Microsoft Windows 7 and enhance your online banking experience:

Microsoft Security Essentials

Download and install Microsoft Security Essentials software from Microsoft Corporation. Set the software up to run a computer virus check automatically on a regular basis with Microsoft Windows security updates. This antivirus software is also available for Windows Vista security.

Malwarebytes

A free antivirus software program, Malwarebytes provides an extra bit of anti-virus computer security since this software performs an independent antivirus spyware scan and may catch malware that Microsoft Security Essentials fails to find. Users can run Malwarebytes once per month for extra data protection and data security against computer viruses, spyware and malware.

Windows Web Security

Web browsers such as IE, Firefox, Safari and Google Chrome record user information about web history and web pages visited. The potential exists for this information to be compromised. It is recommended to choose a secure web browser for normal Web surfing and use another web browser for online web banking only. In this way, the user achieves a certain amount of data protection and any information stored by the online banking web browser will not be exposed to other potentially malicious websites.

Web Browser Security

It is very difficult to recommend Microsoft Internet Explorer as a secure web browser. Chose a secure web browser such as the Mozilla Firefox web browser, Apple Safari or try Google Chrome for online banking and then also choose another for Windows web browser security and normal Web surfing.

Computer Virus Guide

Phishing

NEVER click on links from an email. Hackers will try to steal your online banking password by sending a bogus email stating that you need logon to your bank account immediately when in fact the link in the email forwards the user to a false website where the user gives up his user name and password credentials. This is called phishing. For more information on phishing, malware and computer viruses see the computer virus guide where you can find a list of computer virus and information on the different types of computer viruses.