ETrade will offer customers a Two-factor Authentication Service in a tiered plan. Without getting into the nitty-gritty details, with this innovative technology customers will receive an additional layer of protection that makes it "impossible" for unintended or unauthorized access to accounts through the stealing of passwords.

In general I'm all for that. Here's something about the tiering plan that has struck me as a little weird though (from Computerworld) ...

"ETrade's decision to support two-factor authentication addresses consumer fears about online identity theft and data loss, Levine said. "We felt that this is really something that our customers needed to make them feel comfortable about doing e-commerce," he said.

Initially, ETrade will offer the authentication service as a free option only for customers who maintain accounts with the company that are worth more than $50,000, Levine said. Eventually, other customers will be able to buy the tokens from ETrade for a fee, although the exact amount has not yet been decided."

What I heard in my mind was this though ... "If you have more than $50,000 then we want to protect you from having your money stolen. If you have less than $50,000 then we don't care." - Your Money Manager.

OK - I'm not being fair because putting in place technologies to protect your identity or passwords from being stolen costs money in terms of both infrastructure and processes to admin, etc. That said, it will be interesting to see if the type of "pricing model" being put forth by ETrade will stick for business models related to end-user security in general. ETrade has a tough spot being the trailblazer on this one, and I am all for more security. Bless ETrade and the underlying RSA Security technologies.

Steve Shu