BEDFORD, Mass. -- Conducted in December 2006, the fourth annual Financial Institution Consumer Online Fraud Survey asked 1,678 adults from eight countries around the world for their opinions on evolving fraud threats such as phishing, vishing and keylogging, and on the efforts of their financial institutions to strengthen remote channel banking authentication.

Key results of the survey include:

-- Ninety-one percent of account-holders answered that they are willing to start using a new authentication method, beyond the standard username-and-password, if their banks decided to offer stronger security.

-- Seventy-three percent commented that they would like their financial institution to use risk-based authentication.

-- Sixty-nine percent of account-holders believe that financial institutions should replace username-and-password log-in with stronger authentication for online banking.

-- Fifty-eight percent of account-holders believe that financial institutions should deploy stronger authentication for telephone banking.

-- Eighty-two percent of account-holders would like their banks to monitor online banking sessions and telephone banking sessions for signs of irregular activity or behavior, similar to the way that credit-card transactions are monitored today.

-- While many financial institutions have begun moves to deploy stronger authentication over the past year, only 39 percent of account-holders are aware of it

In addition, trust in the online channel continues to erode. 82 percent of account-holders are less likely to respond to an e-mail from their bank due to scams including phishing -- up from 79 percent in 2005 and 70 percent in 2004 -- and more than half said that they would be less likely to sign-up for or use online banking as a result.

In addition, 44 percent of account-holders reported that they have become increasingly concerned about other types of attacks (besides phishing), such as Trojans and keyloggers, over the past six months.