There is currently considerable interest in the advantages of home banking, yet few customers make the decision to carry out financial transactions from their home computer.
The main obstacle to a more extensive use of this facility appears to be the perception, that security is inadequate and that the user interface can be complicated and confusing. People are reluctant to entrust their own money to an insecure computer system with all its associated viruses, worms, trojans and other risks. Almost all currently available home banking programs are based on the MS Windows operating system, which can be prone to such corrupting programs.
Mon€y-P€nny
The new program Mon€yP€nny, developed in the University of Applied Science Südwestfalen offers a user friendly home banking system with the highest degree of security.
Security has been the overriding priority in the development of the "Mon€yP€nny" program, and therefore it uses the Linux operating system. However it can also be used on computers which only run the MS Windows operating system. This is achieved by either installing the program under a Linux operating system on the hard disk or using a self booting CD version with its own operating system, without any installation.
This CD can be run on any PC regardless of its installed operating system and therefore affords the highest degree of security. The hard disk of the PC is not used at any time, no data are read from or stored on it.
In addition, encryption according to the latest HBCI (Home Banking Computer Interface) is used. The HBCI standard, from 2005 FinTS (Financial Transaction Services) is supported in Germany by many banks, building societies and other financial institutions.
Unauthorised persons can neither read nor interfere with any data transmission. In addition, as USB-sticks or floppy disks are used as storage media, even the encrypted data are not stored on the hard disk and are therefore not accessible, when the computer is used for other purposes such as internet access or games. The user interface is simple and logical and follows the conventional menu system used on the net.
