In an effort to make online banking more secure, the American Bankers Association (ABA) and BITS, the technology policy division of The Financial Services Roundtable, have announced plans to get more involved in the generic Top Level Domain (TLD) effort.

In cooperation with VeriSign Inc., an internet infrastructure services provider, the ABA and BITS are exploring managing and operating future bank-branded or financially affiliated domains. While creating new gTLDs (Generic Top Level Domains) for the financial sector has its benefits, some have raised concerns. The ABA and BITS will further discuss their proposal in October with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the overseer of the gTLD movement.

"With the limited availability of .com domain names, some companies may opt to become early adopters of new TLDs to satisfy their marketing needs," noted the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, better known as ICANN, in a summary about its gTLD program in a recent article on BankInfoSecurity.com.

While the new domaining system will not "automatically" improve online security, it will allow an opportunity for new rules and policies to be put in place and enforced more than in an open .com and .net environment.

It will be interesting to see where this all goes later this year. What do you think?

Kim Brussell is Vice President of Client Services at Long Island advertising agency Austin & Williams, and works with some of the Agency’s largest, and most dynamic, accounts. To read more about Kim, visit her bio section on the A&W web site here.