Bank of America Completes SiteKey Rollout

Bank of America leads the industry with the SiteKey service, which provides an extra level of authentication. Customers pick one of thousands of images, write a brief phrase and select three challenge questions. The customer and the bank can pass that information securely back and forth to confirm each other's identity. Using SiteKey is like getting a safe deposit box that takes two keys to open. Before the customer and the bank agree to open the box together, they confirm each other's identity.

"The SiteKey authentication service will help customers increase their online banking security easily, without adding any new hardware or software," said Sanjay Gupta, e-Commerce executive. "These changes will help all of us work together to prevent fraud and identity theft, while giving us peace of mind about handling finances online."

SiteKey is now a standard part of signing-in. In addition, online banking customers in the two states will be required to create new online IDs and passcodes that will be stronger, because customers will no longer be able to use personally identifiable information such as Social Security numbers and account numbers. Customers also will have the new ability to use letters, numbers and special characters such as underscores, hyphens and asterisks for their IDs and passcodes. Customers have been told about the changes through onscreen messages.