ITASCA, IL — (Marketwire) — 11/11/11 — First Midwest Bank recently announced the introduction of PhoneFactor, a service designed to protect its business banking clients from online bank fraud. PhoneFactor, headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas, is the leading global provider of out-of-band multi-factor authentication. With PhoneFactor, First Midwest clients are empowered to stop online banking fraud in real-time by utilizing out-of-band transaction verification.
When a funds transfer is submitted online, PhoneFactor places an automated call to the client. The client answers the call, listens to the transaction details, and enters a secret Personal Identification Number (PIN) into the phone keypad to approve the transaction. If the transaction is not approved, it is never submitted to the bank for processing. Another significant feature of PhoneFactor allows a client to submit an alert during a fraudulent funds transfer attempt, which instantly notifies the bank that an attack is in progress.
First Midwest-s decision to offer this new service provided by PhoneFactor, was made to enhance the bank-s already effective security program. The additional protection afforded by this new service was validated within a few weeks after it was enabled, as it successfully thwarted a number of attempts by attackers on clients- accounts. Additionally, the recently updated 2011 Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council Authentication Guidance recommends out-of-band transaction verification as part of a layered security approach and this new service is consistent with those guidelines.
“PhoneFactor has already proven its effectiveness and we strongly believe that out-of-band transaction verification is critical to stopping threats that have become more sophisticated and virulent,” stated Jorge Solis, Senior Vice President of Security. “We are very pleased to be able to offer this extended level of security to our clients who view us as their trusted business partner.”
A significant number of First Midwest clients responded to the new service offering and enrolled in the new system within the first few weeks of its availability. Clients were able to sign-up through an entirely automated web page at firstmidwest.com/phonefactor, which enabled rapid deployment and adoption.
First Midwest Bank, the wholly owned subsidiary of Itasca-based First Midwest Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ: FMBI) is the premier relationship-based banking franchise in the Chicagoland banking market with approximately $8.4 billion in assets. As one of the Chicago metropolitan area-s largest independent bank holding companies, First Midwest provides the full range of business, retail banking and trust and investment management services through some 100 offices located in communities in metropolitan Chicago, northwest Indiana, central and western Illinois and eastern Iowa. First Midwest was recently recognized as having the “Highest Customer Satisfaction with Retail Banking in the Midwest” according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2011 Retail Banking Satisfaction Study(SM). The Bank is also recognized by the Chicago Tribune as one of the top 20 best places to work in Chicago among large employers.
PhoneFactor is a leading provider of multi-factor authentication. The company-s award-winning platform uses any phone as a second form of authentication. PhoneFactor-s out-of-band architecture and real-time fraud alerts provide strong security for healthcare, enterprise, banking, and website applications. It is easy and cost effective to set up and deploy to large numbers of geographically diverse users. PhoneFactor has been named to the Bank Technology News FutureNow list of the top 10 technology innovators securing the banking industry today and recently earned a prestigious five stars in the SC Magazine multi-factor authentication group test. Learn more at or follow PhoneFactor on twitter at @phonefactor.
First Midwest Bank
One Pierce Place, Suite 1500
Itasca, Illinois 60143
(630) 875-7450
You must be logged in to post a comment Login