U.S. Government Pushes Banks to Tighten up Online

E-Commerce Times: The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, a federal agency that includes the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the National Credit Union Administration, and oversees banking regulations in the U.S., issued guidelines in late 2005 calling for online banks to implement two-factor identity authentication. Now the agency has announced that it will begin evaluating banks for compliance with the guidelines later this year. The guidelines were issued because the FFIEC felt that single-factor authentication is not secure enough for online banking applications.