How Secure are Banks in the Cloud?
Just for the mere fact of having money transfer, and account information moving through the Cloud, there is a requirement for a high degree of security. The risk of having account numbers and passwords being intercepted must be in the not happening category.
Banks and other business that do money transfer use what is called encryption. Encryption scrambles messages exchanged between your web browser and server that handles your banking.
The way encryption works is when you visit your banks online bank’s sign-on page, your web browser establishes a secure session with the banks server. The secure session is established by using a protocol called Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). This protocol requires the exchange of what called public and private keys.
Each keys is random set of numbers chosen for that session. They are only known between your web browser and the banks server.
Once keys have been exchanged, the web browser will use these numbers to scramble (encrypt) the messages sent between your browser and the server.
Both sides require these keys before any descrambling (decrypt) of messages received.
Now what makes online banking risky is the users of that online banking service. The bulk of online-banking security breaches who unwittingly downloads a Trojan horse with keylogger to their computer. A keylogger can swipe bank-account data just by recording keys that your press on your keyboard when you visit your bank’s website. This includes passwords account number to start.
I could write a book on the results of not maintaining a secure personal, or business computer. This include antivirus software, and good passwords. I leave that for another day.
