Barclays Pin Sentry - a tedious necessity? Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Image via WikipediaBarclays have announced that they have one million customers online in Britain and zero cases of fraud, with the latter attributed to customer's use of smart card readers.The smart card devices generate codes that are required to enable you to log in and to authorise transactions. To operate it, you have to insert your bank card into the device and enter your pin code.
I have an account with Barclays and whilst I recognise they improved security from the introduction of the devices, they've actually made internet banking far less convenient than it should be.
Prior to their introduction, you could log onto your account on a whim and interact with your account, having successfully navigated security controls. Now, such access is only possible provided I constantly carry the smart card reader, which is simply too much of an inconvenience.
I may be in a minority but I remain convinced that similarly levels of security could be achieved via alternate and less intrusive means. However, given the fraud results reported, I doubt this will do anything other than double their resolve about the value of these devices.
posted by John Wilson @ 1:51 PM Permanent Link
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2 Comments:
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At 8:49 AM,
said...
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I'm not sure why they didn't use something you can easily carry around like an RSA SecurID 'token'...
RSA probably wanted too much money for it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecurID -
At 10:05 PM,
said...
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Saw this while googling PIN sentry: Check out that cool Credit Card-ish token instead. Now thats what I want!
http://blogs.verisign.com/identity-emea/2008/04/barclays_pin_sentry_and_nat_we.php
