Most banks in America have one serious problem. Customer information flows in and out of the bank in clear text e-mails. Millions of dollars a year are spent to properly protect and destroy documents, protect networks from threats and vulnerabilities. But what does all of this matter if customers and bank employees still send sensitive information through e-mail. E-mail is very insecure because it flows over the internet in clear text. Employees are encouraged to not use CD’s and USB drives to take information home, but what if employees are emailing information to a personal account to use at home. Anyone with a sniffer and malicious intent can do some serious damage by monitoring bank web traffic. Nobody wants to see fraud or identity theft increase because customer information is so easily accessible by e-mail sniffing. This article from Bank Technology News has some good information about the insecurity of banking emails.
Customers, accountants, attorneys are always going to send sensitive information to their personal bankers. And no matter how much you try to stop them customer service personnel, loan officers, personal bankers are going to send requested information right back to the customer. Yes some files are password protected but these passwords are just imbedded as part of the file.
Now there are services available that will notice strings of what could be customer information and encrypt it coming into or out of the bank. These services will either send the customer an e-mail to go to a secure site to download the message or it can just automatically encrypt it straight to the customer. There are several services out there to protect your reputation and your customer’s privacy. Just Google ‘Email Encryption Services’ and you will get several firms that will protect your emails for you.