Scottrade Inc. announced it will offer its customers antivirus software from McAfee Inc., along with a year of free updates.
The online brokerage plans to start delivering the Santa Clara, Calif., company's VirusScan Plus over the summer. The product typically costs $39.99 for consumers, not counting the cost of updating the software to protect against new viruses.
"Our customers are concerned about spyware, phishing, and other online security threats," Roger Riney, Scottrade's president and chief executive, said in a press release Monday. "It is vitally important that Internet users adequately protect themselves."
Financial companies rarely offer consumer security products to their customers because of the complexity of supporting software on the consumers' desktop. Barclays Bank PLC, which has offered antivirus software from F-Secure Corp. for a year, said it had to train its employees to handle tech support.
Others simply limit the ways the antivirus software can be used. TD Ameritrade Inc. offers software from WholeSecurity Inc., a unit of Symantec Corp. of Cupertino, Calif., that scans for malicious software only when customers log on to its site.
Most banks have chosen to improve their online security through other means, such as using software to verify that the computer logging in is one recognized as belonging to the customer. Scottrade, of St. Louis, has used such software from PassMark Security Inc., now a part of EMC Corp.'s RSA Security, since last year.
