A $300,000 Reason Why Secure Banking Is Now a “Business” Responsibility Too

AVG posted a blog entry on 6/10/2011 detailing a situation where a US District Court Judge in the state of Maine has ruled this week that Ocean Bank is not liable for $300,000 stolen by hackers from Patco Construction Company’s online banking profile.

In May 2009 hackers siphoned around US$100,000 per day from Patco’s online bank account. The hackers had previously sent an email to employees carrying a Zeus password-stealing Trojan, which was successfully installed on an employee computer.

The judge ruled that the bank’s security was on the level of other bank’s security. The judge ruled that the bank made it clear to customers when they signed up for an account and the amount of liability the bank would shoulder. He ruled that Patco itself was ultimately responsible for the loss because it hadn’t better secured its credential.

This is increasing scary when we read reports that show that less than half are aware of the real and tangible threats posed by Internet based attacks, and that one in seven small businesses have no security software (this number rising to 1 of 4 in businesses that are single employee).

Given this week’s events in the US, it should be clearer than ever than business-level IT security issues necessitate a precision engineered business-grade IT security software suite. Now is the time to act. So we must learn from the Patco Construction case and not become an easy target for the hackers; your business can take steps to avoid malicious IT attacks, so please afford it the respect it deserves.

A good starting point is AVG’s Free Online Security Audit.