Authentication

In the wake of the Bitfinex heist, protecting consumers must again be at the forefront of the digital currency community.

Most would agree the way digital identity is managed is suboptimal. But how identity should be managed, and who should manage it, are shaping up to be hotly debated questions.

Banks will likely take a wait-and-see approach before connecting their apps to Siri, Apple's talking digital assistant. Such conservatism poses risks as consumers increasingly demand the latest digital features.

Many financial criminals are switching to a more sophisticated kind of identity theft in which they open accounts based on stolen identities, or on composites of information stolen from different people.

The Electronic Payments Coalition's arguments supporting Visa in its legal battle with Walmart are not based in fact.

Some days the ride-sharing app receives more than a million phishing emails — a stat to which large banks can relate. But after deploying common protocols and open-source software, Uber now rejects most bad emails.

The drumbeat of news about hackers stealing millions of dollars by gaming the Swift interbank messaging system should have been a wake-up call for banking executives, but it's unclear how many of them answered it. Is it too late for them to shore up their defenses?

By allowing commercial clients to authenticate via an eye scan, Wells Fargo is making a burdensome task simple. Secil Watson, head of wholesale Internet solutions, is pushing the bank to make digital banking easier for commercial clients.

In the ongoing melee between the two major players, strong authentication has been put on the backburner in favor of the respective economies of implementing chip card technology.

The San Francisco bank isn't interested in making splashy investments in technology. At an investor day event Tuesday, Wells executives said they would focus on taking incremental steps to reduce costs and improve customer experiences.

Everyone agrees that electronic transactions should be as safe as possible, but a PIN mandate will not prevent online or mobile fraud.

The distributed ledger technology has an answer for updating every core function of the antiquated financial system.

Add HSBC to the list of banks offering Touch ID authentication services to mobile banking customers.

Deloitte is partnering with five blockchain companies as it seeks practical uses for the emerging technology in its consulting business.

Digital Identity Security Co., a startup, is building an encrypted messaging and identity management platform for the Commonwealth governments. The system would use distributed ledger technology, similar to bitcoin's blockchain.

Wells Fargo will soon roll out eyeprint verification for its commercial customers using its mobile banking platform.

Nearly half of bank data security incidents in 2015 involved compromised web applications, according to a closely watched annual report from Verizon released Tuesday.

JPMorgan Chase has added fingerprint authentication for customers on Android devices.

In the conclusion of a three-part interview, Ryan Singer, a blockchain-tech entrepreneur, explains why bankers should care about Washington's resurgent efforts to insert back doors into security systems.

Airbnb, the company that disrupted the hospitality industry as Uber did to taxis, is sidling up to the fintech space.