The fast paced world of technology brings new opportunities for all of us to enrich and improve our lives. Unfortunately, there are also plenty of criminals looking for new opportunities to enrich and improve their bank balance at our expense. The new and ever changing tactics of these criminals require new approaches to protecting ourselves.

Tomorrow’s world today

I recently read an article highlighting all the things that had not been invented the last time NSW won the State of Origin, seven years ago. They included things that are now ingrained in our everyday lives like Facebook, Twitter, iPhones and the iPad I am writing this blog post on, let alone concepts like mobile banking, peer to peer, ‘bump’ and contactless payments.  In fact, seven years ago, this paragraph would have sounded like a foreign language. It made me realise that just about everything my team at CommBank deals with today did not exist seven years ago.

Fraud protection teams

While most of the Internet is a safe, exciting and enabling environment, there are also dark alleyways and shady characters that need to be avoided and protected against. Many of these dangers were not around seven years ago — and my job and my team did not need to exist. Today, CBAcert (CBA Computer Emergency Response Team) looks down these dark alleyways and identifies those shady characters.  Along with CommBank’s world class fraud protection teams, CBAcert is actively protecting CommBank customers from dangers that lurk on the Internet.    

In the old days, we had huge vaults, alarms and guards with guns to protect our customer’s assets. But no matter how strong these were, they couldn’t always protect our customers if they wandered down the wrong path late at night. 

Taking care

Online, just as in life, we all need to take care of ourselves and avoid dangerous situations. A breakdown in online safety can have very real consequences for our finances, privacy and identity. Unfortunately, the preservation of our online safety is just not a primal instinct like the preservation of our physical safety, so we may need to work at it and get the latest information to protect ourselves.

So here are my top three tips for your online safety

  1. Turn on automatic updates. The software on your computer needs to be updated regularly to fix security holes that are discovered. It can be challenging to update everything, which is why I recommend installing a product to help take care of this for you. Secunia PSI, for example, is a free product that scans your computer to identify programs that need updating and downloads the relevant files.
  2. Install an anti-virus product. CommBank offers a free six month subscription to McAfee Internet Security for our customers. 
  3. Avoid unscrupulous websites. You don’t need to download a program to be infected with a virus. Viruses can install themselves when you simply visit the wrong website.  There are free products available that can help you avoid visiting the wrong website, such as K9 Web Protection.

And here are my top 3 tips for safe online banking

  • Register for NetCode SMS.  This is a free service offered by CommBank that helps ensure only you can perform transactions on your account.  
  • Read the NetCode SMS carefully and only proceed if you intended on performing that action. Ensure the destination account specified is correct. 
  • If your Internet banking is acting strangely, such as unusual messages or asking for additional information, contact your bank immediately.  If you are suspicious, it is best to call your bank.

At CommBank, we are proud of our online security and are confident to offer our customers a 100% Security Guarantee.  For more useful information, check out our security centre.