Time to Dedicate a Computer to Banking

Credit card processing organizations and banks are beginning to demand a dedicated PC that resides on a separate network from the rest of your computers in order to process a credit card transaction or access online banking. We have seen two instances of this so far and based upon the trend and industry reports from others we think that this requirement is going to spread quickly.

It means purchasing a computer just for this purpose. It means separating the wiring that the computer connects to from the others in the LAN. It means isolating the computer.

As far as isolation goes, most of you will be all-set. The Calyptix firewalls that we recommend have at least 4 networks available and all of the security tools necessary to create and protect the isolated space. For the computer, we are going to experimenting with a couple of very inexpensive devices – a PI and a thin client. We’ll be taking this project up in our lab to build and configure very simple inexpensive devices to service the purpose of online banking.

The PI is the same device that we’ve configured for our digital signage solution and the Thin Client is the same that we recommend as PC replacement for accessing terminal servers. In this case we’ll look to create a different configuration using these tried and true devices.

It’s our goal to stay ahead of the trend. So we’ll be ready with a solution when your bank issues the requirement or when you are ready to move to higher security banking.

-Amy