by Matt Brownell

Earlier this month, federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment charging several men with bank theft on massive scale. According to prosecutors, the thieves loaded stolen account data onto magnetic stripe cards, which they then used to steal $45 million from ATMs around the world.

As financial institutions reconsider their security procedures in the wake of the breach, much of the attention will naturally fall on America’s reliance on magnetic-stripe cards, instead of the more secure chip-and-PIN (also called EMV) cards used in other parts of the world.

While they’re at it, though, the banks should also consider another big security black eye: The fact that it’s easier to hack into your bank account than it is to crack your Facebook account.

Protecting Us From Ourselves

It’s a fundamental truth of network security that no system can ever be truly safe from intruders. That’s because of one universal weak point: the user. As long as people insist on opening phishing emails, picking weak passwords and leaving their PCs unprotected from malware, hackers will find a point of entry.

So recent innovations in online security have focused on solutions that protect consumers from themselves.

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