I'm hijacking my own thread.
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To ETrade clients who were offered a free RSA SecureID Token to better protect access to their accounts:
Did you accept or reject their offer? If you'd like to expand on your reasoning for either, I'd love to hear some opinions.
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Link to ETrade's page on this, including an option to enroll. (It's not a hot link because of the "https". You'll have to copy and paste.)
us.etrade.com
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More on this....
Back in early March of this year, ETrade announced they were going to offer to certain clients a free RSA SecureID token to better protect access to their accounts.
Rather than just having to enter a user id and password to get into their accounts, clients opting to use the token would also have to enter a 6 digit number displayed on their token at the time logon. This provides an additional layer of security in that just the user id/password associated with the account wouldn't be enough to get you into the account.
Of course there are disadvantages. First of all, there's the increased hassle of having to enter more information before being able to login. And secondly, you'd have to have the token on you and handy whenever you want to login.
My specific purpose here with this thread now is to take an unscientific survey to see how many ETrade clients accepted this offer and how many declined it. My broader goal is to get a better understanding of our consumers feel about the additional hassle of using stronger authentication to get better security.
Why? Some of it is personal curiosity and interest in security technology, but there are also investment opportunities in this space with companies who supply authentication tokens and systems. (e.g. RSAS, VRSN, VDSI, SFNT, ALDN) The consumer market is HUGE if adoption becomes a reality. Many financial orgnanizations throughout the world are considering using stronger authentication, but I suspect there may be some resistance from consumers with regard to the hassle factor.
Silicon Investor provides a terrific forum for gauging the attitudes of likely users. I suspect a high percentage of SI members use the web not only for trading, but also for banking. These are two primary target markets for consumer-based strong authentication. |
