.BANK Emerges as Anti-Fraud Platform

As Internet usage has become a mainstay of American life, so too have financial losses stemming from online fraud. Banks have invested heavily in third-party technologies to prevent and detect fraudulent activity and now, thanks to the creation of new .BANK domains—have a new weapon to add to their arsenal.

.BANK domains create secure and trusted platforms that banks can use to interact online with their customers. When a consumer sees the .BANK extension, he or she immediately knows that the website is owned by a bank and is a safe place to manage his or her finances.  

.BANK domains have more than 30 additional security requirements than .COM domains thereby granting additional layers of protection to the consumer. Consider the following difference between .COM and .BANK requirements:

Attribute	.COM	.BANK
Eligibility	Anyone can get one	Restricted to banks only
Naming allocation	Anything, leading to spoofing and phishing	Must correspond to bank’s existing rights
Encryption	Optional	Required
Domain Name System Security Extensions	Optional	Required
Domain Message Authentication Reporting	Optional	Required
Email Authentication	Optional	Required
Multi-factor authentication	Optional	Required

Short domain names in .COM were snapped up by speculators long ago, but there are still a large number of short generic names available in .BANK. ICBA and EnCirca have teamed up to provide education and resources to community banks that would like to learn more about .BANK. For more information visit Encirca & ICBA.