Eight Ways: Money is Protected Online
Nowadays, companies have multiple ways of protecting your money online. Whether they are a bank or a website that sells your favorite shoes, they will all have tools that help to keep your money, transactions, and personal data secure.
From a live dealer online casino to the biggest banks in the world, here are eight ways they keep your money secure.
Cybersecurity AI
AI has taken over the world of cybersecurity and is quickly making systems near impenetrable. It can be taught how to spot viruses and hacks and then instantly block them.
This ability to learn means AI can see potential dangers before they occur, ensuring your money and data are protected against even the strongest hacks and viruses.
Encryption
Encryption is not a new technology, but it’s still one of the most effective ways to protect data online. In simple terms, encrypting documents and data transforms the source material into something that’s unreadable by both humans and computer programs.
To “fix” the data again so you can read it, you need a key. This means that even if your data is stolen, it’s going to take a monumental amount of work to unencrypt it.
Multi-factor authentication
Multi-factor authentication may seem like a basic security protocol, but it’s actually far more effective than you may think. It requires hackers to not only know multiple bits of personal information, but then also to have access to the phone or email that is required to confirm all the information.
You can think of it as a thief picking a lock to break into a house, only to be met with a brick wall on gaining entry. The thieves (or hackers) simply don’t have the right tools to break down the wall.
The blockchain
The blockchain is being used more and more by financial institutions and businesses to protect data. It works by storing data in one “block,” and then connecting that block to another data block, and so on and so forth.
As another block is added, the one before it becomes more secure. This means that the more the blockchain is used, and the more data is added, the better protected it will be.
Automatic logout
Automatic logout can be very annoying at times to the user, but it’s a simple and effective tool favored by online banking platforms as a way of preventing you from staying logged in to your account for too long on a potentially insecure public internet connection.
Public Wi-Fi often has very low security, and hackers can exploit this to access your systems and accounts. The automatic logout helps to ensure that your device is secured against any such potential hacks.
Hardware
A small feature that some banks offer is giving clients a piece of hardware that adds a further layer of protection. These little gadgets vary in design, but one example is a small card scanner that looks like a calculator.
Clients use this to scan their cards and receive a randomized pin or code that they can then use to log in to their accounts and/or approve transactions. It may be a somewhat low-tech piece of hardware, but it ensures that your passwords and security codes are constantly changing, making them harder to hack.
Legal money protection
With the advent of online banking, new laws and legal protections were required. Online banks get hacked all the time, and your money is always under threat. However, there are provisions in place to protect you.
Depending on where you live and where you bank, there will be a variety of legal measures in place that ensure at least some, if not all, of your money is protected in the event of a hack.
Instant account and card freezing
Back in the day, if your money was stolen, there was very little you could do to stop the thief from spending it, barring actually catching them in the act. However, nowadays you have the ability to instantly freeze your accounts and cards if there’s a problem.
Almost every bank will freeze your accounts instantly if your card gets stolen or your account is hacked. This not only stops the thieves from stealing your money, but the bank can also track and find the card’s location and when it’s being used.
