Bill Harris, former CEO of Intuit and PayPal introduces PASSMARKS

Available now, PassMarks help financial institutions, ecommerce sites and enterprises protect their Internet users against phishing attacks. Heres how PassMarks work: When a customer logs in to a banks Web site, the bank shows the customer his PassMark - a personalized image known only to the customer and the bank - before asking for his password. Since a fake Web site will not know the customers PassMark, its safe for the customer to enter his password once he sees his PassMark. And PassMarks can also be used to authenticate outgoing email from the bank to the customer. The Phishing Problem The FBI calls phishing the hottest and most troubling new scam on the Internet. Heres how phishing scams work: A fraudster creates a fake email that looks like its from a bank and sends it to thousands of the banks customers. Customers who click on the links in the fake email are taken to a fake Web site, which looks like the banks web site but is run by the fraudster. Once a customer enters his password into the fake Web site, the fraudster can use that password to gain entry into the customers real accounts at the real bank Web site. And he can steal real money. Phishing attacks have been launched against most of the major financial institutions and e-commerce sites around the globe, including eBay, Citibank, AOL, Bank One, PayPal, Barclays, Visa and the FDIC. The Anti-Phishing Working Group reports that the number of phishing attacks increased by 50 percent just between December and January, when an estimated 100 million phishing emails were sent to Internet users. More information on PassMarks is available at www.passmarksecurity.com.