South African banking group Standard Bank on Friday announced that it has purchased and will supply its new and existing Internet banking customers with McAfee personal firewall and anti-virus software.
While the bank would not disclose the exact amount it has spent, CE Jacko Maree said that the figure ran into millions of rands.
While Standard Bank is unaware of any of its customers being defrauded, the purchase follows the disclosure by Absa at the weekend that three of its clients in the Western Cape had money moved from their accounts by a hacker who gained unauthorised access to their computers.
In addition to the firewall software, Standard Bank has introduced an additional security measure in the form of a calculator type PIN pad. This allows customers to enter their PIN numbers by clicking a mouse on a pop-up screen. The ABSA hacker was able to access customers’ information via keystroke logging software and the new PIN pad prevents this. – I-Net Bridge