First of many? Financial services and strong authentication.

This is great news. E*Trade is offering strong authentication to its online brokerage customers. These RSA tokens look like a key and can be carried almost as easily. If a hacker/identity thief wants to break into your account they have to have the key (actually the 6 digit number that displays on the key and changes every minute) as well as your username and password. As I said in this blog on February 16 this is the model all financial institutions will be moving to. It is the logical and necessary next step in online security.

My congratulations to E*Trade for starting what I hope will be a trend.

Full disclosure: I have no stock or other financial interest in either E*Trade or RSA.