Compliance Newsflashes: Canadian Regulator Sounds Alarm on Online Brokerage Accounts, and more

Canadian Regulator Warns of Online Account Attacks

The Enforcement Department of the Investment Dealers Association (IDA) of Canada, issued a warning to investors, claiming to have received information from several sources that unauthorized persons have gained access to clients' online trading accounts. The source of the breach is currently unknown.

The IDA supposed that the vulnerability of client information is likely a result of either phishing, pharming or a viral attack. There is no suggestion that the security of member firms' on-line systems has been compromised.

In the instances reported to the IDA, client portfolios were sold out. The credit was then used to place buy orders for specific securities listed on the OTC Bulletin Board or NASDAQ pink sheets. The IDA believes the purpose of such activity was to manipulate the price of shares in the issuer. In some instances, the trades were settled before the clients were even aware that there had been an online breach of their account and firms are now receiving client complaints concerning these unauthorized activities.

Wells Fargo Reveals Recipe for Security Cocktail

Wells Fargo implemented new upgrades to its online security platform designed to give customers and businesses even more protection in the fight against Internet fraud.

"The fight against online fraud is a continuous and comprehensive effort and an evolutionary process at Wells Fargo," said Jim Smith, executive vice president of Wells Fargo's Internet channel and products, in a release. "No one solution can solve the problem of online security. We favor a layered security approach to protect our most important assets: our customers."

As all banks will need to comply by year-end with the new Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) guidelines, Wells Fargo seeks to meet and exceed them with a grab-bag of security and authentication technologies. Some of the new technologies that complement Well Fargo's security platform and each other's effectiveness include real-time risk analysis by Bharosa with data integrated from Quova Inc., a fraud detection solution by Actimize Inc., and one-time passwords for customers' high dollar money movement applications using RSA Security's RSA SecurID tokens.

"These are not the last of the upgrades," Smith said, in the statement. "They are additional enhancements to our security in an ever-changing process to give the customer the utmost protection possible. Wells Fargo relies on a vigilant and steadfast approach to online security - a layered approach and best-of-breed solutions - to protect customers' information and funds in a way that is seamless and also does not inconvenience them."

Users of Banco Antonveneta's E-Banking Application Secured by VASCO

Italian bank Banca Antonveneta has started the deployment of VASCO Data Security International's Digipass GO3 and VACMAN Controller to secure the phone and online users of its retail banking application Bybank.

Over the coming months Banca Antonveneta will aggressively deploy VASCO's GO3 to all of its users. Digipass GO 3 has been baptized "GE.CO" by the bank. To support strong authentication over multiple channels, Banca Antonveneta has integrated both VASCO's VACMAN Controller for IBM Z/OS and Digipass plug-in for Tivoli Access Manager

Digipass GO3 is a lightweight, low cost strong user authentication product, especially designed for the large volume banking market. GO3 is extremely easy to use - with a simple touch of a button, the customer generates a unique one-time password. The password can be only used once, which means that it can't be reused by fraudsters.

"Security and customer service are of the utmost importance for Banca Antonveneta," said Arianna Azzolini, head of marketing and products at Banca Antonveneta, in a release. "After a thorough analysis of the vendors, we opted for VASCO because of the integration flexibility of VACMAN Controller, its reliability, the low total cost of ownership and the proven quality and ease of use of Digipass GO3. We are convinced that our Bybank application and GE.CO will be a huge success."