St George refutes bank breach - News

To print: Select File and then Print from your browser's menu

--------------------------------------------------------------
This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
--------------------------------------------------------------

St George refutes bank breach

By Rachel Lebihan, 0
February 19, 2001
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/soa/St-George-refutes-bank-breach/0,139023165,120204822,00.htm

St George Bank has refuted claims that its Internet banking security has been breached.

It follows a customer's revelations that she could access her company's accounts through her own personal Internet banking account.

"Our security has not been breached at all," St George Bank's Adam Cook told ZDNet.

The St George security flaw was exposed last week when an accountant at venture capital company Ebit found she could access the company's accounts and make transactions using her personal PIN number.

St George put the incident down to a "procedural problem".

"It's not really such a big deal," Cook said. "It's basically a result of how the account was set up in the first place."

According to St George, anyone who is a signatory on the company accounts would be able to access them.

"We're investigating and closing that loop," Cook said.

With over 220,000 online customers, Cook said it was very difficult to get into every business account to ensure the same security loop wasn't replicated.

St George claims this is the first time the bank has been informed of a problem of this kind and repudiated the claim that banks have rushed into Net banking at the detriment of security issues.

"We've been at the leading edge of Internet banking since its inception [in Australia]," Cook said. "Our security is robust."

St George has offered Internet banking to its customers since it merged with Advance Bank about four years ago. Advance introduced Net banking in 1995.