To offer its customers a secured online fund transfer, First Midwest Bank has deployed PhoneFactor’s (News - Alert) out-of-band transaction verification service.

In matter of two weeks after the service was enabled for customers, the bank was impressed with the PhoneFactor’s service that could easily thwart an attacker who attempted to transfer thousands of dollars out of a customer’s account – saving First Midwest Bank and its customer time, money and trust.

This innovative service by PhoneFactor helps First Midwest Bank’s customers to stop online banking fraud in real-time. In-fact, PhoneFactor places an automated call to the customer, whenever there is a funds transfer is initiated online.

The customer simply answers the call, listens to the transaction details, and enters a secret PIN into the phone keypad to approve the transaction. If the transaction is not approved by the customer, it is never submitted to the bank for processing. And in the case of a fraudulent funds transfer, the customer can submit a fraud alert during the call, which instantly notifies the bank that an attack is in progress.

“With threats evolving to become more sophisticated and more virulent, we believe out-of-band transaction verification is critical to protecting our customers,” said Jorge Solis, senior vice president of Security at First Midwest Bank.

Solis said that PhoneFactor has proven its effectiveness within a matter of weeks by stopping a fraud attempt that they know for certain would not have been caught by security tokens alone and FFIEC compliance is important to First Midwest Bank, but perhaps even more important is extending this level of security to their customers who view them as a trusted business partner.

First Midwest Bank officials said that half of their customers have already accepted the new system and enrolled. Customers were able to sign up by simply clicking on a splash page on the bank’s website and the entire process, including the issuance of PINs, was automated, enabling rapid deployment to customers.

Steve Dispensa (News - Alert), chief technology officer at PhoneFactor, said that their out-of-band transaction verification service stops fraudulent transactions that would go undetected by other methods and this has been demonstrated at First Midwest Bank and in countless other cases.

In other news, PhoneFactor recently announced a new partnership with Accelera Solutions to make PhoneFactor available to government agencies through the GSA (News - Alert) Advantage! program.