Momentary Security Panic for U.K. Banking Customers

HSBC customers across the pond had a scare last week when they logged onto the bank's business Web site and were met with a message saying the site's security digital certificate had expired.The glitch, which HSBC said had no impact on the site's integrity or functionality, lasted a day until the bank installed a new certificate that enables it to place security messages on its Business Internet Banking home page.

"Despite the message that they could be logging into a Web site pretending to be something it was not, this was obviously not the case," an HSBC spokesman said. "There were no security risks associated with the certificate expiring."

According to research from the TowerGroup, more than half of all small businesses use online banking services; the HSBC incident underscores customers' increasing awareness of security threats, such as phishing and identity theft.The Register