As published by Times Herald-Record. Visit website for full article. 

(Times Herald-Record | 4/22/17): Walden Savings Bank will become just the fifth bank in New York state to switch from a standard .com website domain to a more secure .bank version when the company transitions in May.

The change makes Walden an early adopter of a cyber-banking security measure that’s gradually taking root mostly among community banks or those with less than $10 billion in assets and a local lending focus.

The added security comes in part by the domain’s issuance being tightly controlled by the Financial Top Level Domains Registry Services, a private company owned by banking and insurance trade groups and investors.

“For us, the .bank change is all about being able to offer our customers that enhanced level of security because they know they’re really at the verified Walden Savings Bank website,” said John Carola, Walden’s vice president of retail delivery and marketing.

Created in 2015, the .bank domain helps safeguard against cyber-squatting, in which scammers register website names of well-known companies or brands, and typo-squatting, or snapping up misspelled versions of those sites.

Those techniques are used in combination with phishing and pharming – deceptive attempts to impersonate reputable firms by tricking Internet users into sharing personal information via fake electronic communications and bogus websites.

“Just as you would take the necessary precautions when people come into your physical bank to create a secure physical branch environment, changing to the .bank domain is the functional equivalent in the digital environment,” said Ed Moskowitz, executive vice president of Multimedia Solutions, a New Jersey-based web service firm helping Walden and other banks with the domain change.

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