The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center represents some of the largest banks in the United States of America. They have issued a report that recommends to commercial banking customers to take rigorous steps in securing online bank accounts.
The report recommends to “carry out all online banking activity from a standalone, hardened, and locked-down computer from which e-mail and Web browsing is not possible.” The best method would be to use a Linux based operating system. Even better yet would be to use a version of Linux, such as Knoppix, that can be booted from DVD. This would prevent a hacker, virus, malicious websites or other threats from making permanent changes.
It is estimated that 491 million computers will be infected within the next year with almost all of them running Microsoft.