Barclays take behavioural approach to online security

Barclays Bank is to up the level of scrutiny for its online customers in a bid to cut down on Internet fraud.

The 300-year-old high street bank, which has 25 million customers around the world, is using technology to monitor online transactions by examining IP addresses, physical locations and people's buying behaviour.

RSA's Cyota Transaction Monitoring was sold to the bank to compare each transaction to a user's profile. That information includes a person's spending behaviour and data about the computer device they use.

The system then compares the data to known fraud patterns and presents the bank with a score. High-risk transactions can then be blocked.

Ian Morgan, head of channel development at Barclays, said in a statement: "We needed a solution that would help monitor and control the potential threats faced by our online customers but without hassling them or impacting the growing adoption of our online services.

"The system was up and running in full production following a simple and seamless implementation project, and the results have been extremely positive so far in terms of behind the scenes user authentication, fraud detection and an exceptionally low false-positive rate."