Years ago, banks gave up on selling tokens generating one-time passwords. The pitch – improved security for online shopping – failed to register with consumers.
Maybe the banks should have offered to throw in an animal as part of the deal.
Forty percent of players of Activision Blizzard's online game World of Warcraft have paid $6.50 each for a security token to protect their accounts, totaling $26 million in revenue from security device sales,
I wonder: are the players really buying security — or are they buying a pet? If the latter, is this sales pitch something banks could have used?
The banking equivalent to this might be affinity relationships and check designs. I always think back to
In theory, a bank could take a cue from Blizzard and promote security by offering certain check designs or affinity perks to consumers only after they agree to use a password token.
Unfortunately, if this idea could have worked, its time has likely passed.
Celent's Jacob Jegher, who brought the Warcraft story to my attention by
More importantly, he says, the security gains from distributing tokens may no longer be worth the effort.
"Even if banks started dishing out tokens to consumer markets, fraudsters have found ways around that," he says.
Back in 2005, when banks were evaluating one-time password tokens to help them meet new security guidelines, the keychain devices were held in higher regard. But since then, the Zeus malware has run rampant and a data breach at EMC Corp.'s RSA Security, a major supplier of tokens, has eroded trust in the technology.
Maybe someday, with newer security technology, we'll see banks turning to Superman and his peers to get consumers to improve their security.
Daniel Wolfe is an editor for risk management at American Banker.