Bank of New Zealand

Background: Bank of New Zealand—one of New Zealand's leading financial institutions - is a member of the National Australia Bank Group, which has a geographic spread of assets in Australia, Asia, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. Globally, the National Group has an asset base of over a $250 billion and is ranked as one of the 50 largest banks in the world.

Challenges:

Rising levels of global e-crime and the desire to do the right thing for customers prompted Bank of New Zealand's search for a second factor authentication solution. The solution was found in Entrust's IndentityGuard.

Issues: Bank of New Zealand recognized that online attacks against financial institutions in their country were becoming more prevalent.

Security safeguards needed to be implemented to help protect their customers. However, as in cases with other organizations, customer bases don't always react positively when forced to adopt new technology or methods - even if it could be in their best interest.

While a password system was in place, there was a risk that phishing emails couldspoof the site and pry sensitive information from customers - all under the guise of legitimacy. The bank also wanted a way to better protect customers against trojan attacks, online tracking tools, key stroke loggers and man-in-the-middle attacks.

Bank of New Zealand selected Entrust to deploy the Entrust IdentityGuard solution in the form of a second-factor grid access authentication card - a strategy to ease their customers' fears and improve the security and privacy of online transactions.

Solution provided by Entrust:

Entrust’s second-factor solution

Other two-factor authentication options were considered, but the bank chose the Entrust solution based on its ease of use, mobility and convenience for customers. An added bonus was the significantly lower cost per user, which helped enable the bank to provide the re-branded grid access card, NetGuard, free of charge.

The bank identified a number of key features that assisted in protecting their business, customers and assets. Entrust's second-factor strategy:

• Allows customers to better identify that they have reached Bank of New Zealand's authentic Internet banking site
• Provides a physical authentication tool at the login stage, which is proactive in protecting customers' information, archived banking transaction history and any transactions completed within the session
• Protects the against exposure to potential fraudulent acts via online attacks

Customers applaud effort with overwhelming response

With the support of Entrust, Bank of New Zealand rebranded the second-factor authentication grid access card with the NetGuard name. NetGuard was introduced to customers and provided as a free option that they could sign up for at any time.

 

Summary: The strategy paid off. During the first six months of deployment in 2006, the bank had more than 70,000 customers register for the new NetGuard service - all without a dedicated marketing effort or unique promotion incentive. The bank originally purchased 50,000 licenses for the first year, but had 30,000 members sign up for the service in the first few weeks of deployment and have now
increased the amount of licenses purchased to 500,000.

Blair Vernon, general manager marketing for Bank of New Zealand, credited the success of NetGuard to bank customers' understanding for the need of additional security and second-factor authentication.

Entrust
16633 Dallas Parkway – Suite 800
Dallas, TX 75001
Tel: +1-972 713 5915

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