In their haste to build competitive online services, some financial institutions have failed to implement the latest encryption technologies. Those using outmoded 40-bit encryption to secure transactions risk a major security breach รป and the resulting publicity will be disastrous, says Dave Olsen, vice president of electronic syndicate at JP Morgan.
Olsen became aware of the issue while educating customers in the use of JP Morgan's varied sites and trading platforms. In many cases, customers were not able to log on to the system. They said they didn't have any problems with other sites and we found that the problem is that they're using non 128-bit technology, he says.
40-bit secure...