Online Banking Security in Europe: Balancing security, ease of use, culture and cost.

According to Celent Communications, European Banks spend on average two to three times as much per online banking customer on fraud prevention technologies compared to their American counterparts.

The annual amount lost to online banking fraud in Europe pales in comparison to the combined budgets banks devoted to prevention. European Banks continue to spend on prevention technology primarily because of cultural attitudes towards the perceived risk and the potential damage to the brand image from any fraud incident.

In a new report entitled "Online Banking Security in Europe," Celent provides an overview of the different ways banks provide security around authentication for online retail and corporate banking customers.

"Unlike the American market which predominantly uses a username/password combination to authenticate its consumers, European banks have deployed a great variety of strong authentication solutions to serve both corporate and retail users" says banking analyst Alex Brutin.

The report gives an overview of the authentication solutions used in the 15 largest European banks as well as a country overview on both the retail and corporate level.