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Expat FX app Savings accounts Worldwide payments. Follow the onscreen instructions to create a PIN and generate your first security code. You can now use your Secure Key to generate a security code. Your confirmation PIN did not match the first PIN entered. Press the yellow button and repeat the steps to set up a PIN. Setting up your Digital Secure Key First, you’ll need the first direct mobile banking app downloaded on your smartphone. Once you've logged on, just go to 'Security Settings' in the menu, and select 'Activate Digital Secure Key'. We'll then take you through the steps to get all set up.

First Direct 'Secure Keys'

Oh man.. this is gonna be a rant - interested in opinions. imho this is crying out for a news story.

So.. First Direct have now changed the way you log on for internet banking.

old way:

- combination of answer to common question (low security, easily phished). i.e. what was the name of your school (oh - lets have a look of facebook, etc)

- entering 3 character of your password (pretty high security providing proper password naming rules applied)

new way:

- you MUST use a secure key (either physical one or one on your phone - which they call an 'electronic secure key as if the other one isn't electronic..)

- same answer to common quesiton required

- enter secure key code

thats it - you are now in and can steal all my money.

Now, whenever I have used secureID type keys before they are an additional level of security - I still need my regular password as well - e.g. VPN use for company, etc, etc.

Here, they have TAKEN AWAY the password !!!

so lose yer phone (or physyical key) and thief simply needs to guess (or easily find on the phone or social media) your answer to common question, and they are in.

WTF!!!

The only person this seems to protect is First Direct! - what ? you got all your money stolen ? Did you lose your phone (yes), did you tell us immediately (no.. I didnn't realise it was lost/stolen till next day). well that's not our problem is it - you've been careless, tough shit.

What they CAN say, is that without the secure key its less likely someone can get into your account - but with proper password security this was unlikely anyway.

they are just covering their arse, and giving the end user a far less secure service that before. 104 bit wep key generator.

So, for me, thats the end of internet banking. I can still do some stuff without a secure key and will just have to call them when I want to do other things.

this is typical of banks (the verified by visa shite is another example of 'implementing a system which adds FA extra security but covers the banks arse)

by Ramesh Lingappa

We all know how valuable APIs are. They’re the gateway to exploring other services, integrating with them, and building great solutions faster.

You might have built or are thinking of building APIs for other developers to use. An API needs some form of authentication to provide authorised access to the data it returns.

There are several authentication standards available today such as API Keys, OAuth, JWT, etc.

In this article, we’ll look at how to correctly manage API Keys to access APIs.

So Why API Keys?

API Keys are simple to use, they’re short, static, and don’t expire unless revoked. They provide an easy way for multiple services to communicate.

If you provide an API for your clients to consume, it’s essential for you to build it in the right way.

Let’s get started, and I’ll show you how to build API Keys the right way.

API Key Generation

Generate A Secure Key On First Direct App For Iphone

Since the API key itself is an identity by which to identify the application or the user, it needs to be unique, random and non-guessable. API keys that are generated must also use Alphanumeric and special characters. An example of such an API key is zaCELgL.0imfnc8mVLWwsAawjYr4Rx-Af50DDqtlx.

Secure API Key Storage

Since the API key provides direct access to data, it’s pretty much like a password that a user of a web or mobile app provides to gain access to the same data.

Think about it. The reason we need to store API keys is to make sure that the API key in the request is valid and issued by us (just like a password).

We don’t need to know the raw API key, but just need to validate that the key is correct. So instead of storing the key in plain text (bad) or encrypting it, we should store it as a hashed value within our database.

A hashed value means that even if someone gains unauthorised access to our database, no API keys are leaked and it’s all safe. The end user would send the raw API key in each API request, and we can validate it by hashing the API key in the request and compare the hashed key with the hash stored within our database. Here is a rough implementation of it in Java:

In the code above, the primary key will be a combination of the prefix and the hash of the API key {prefix}.{hash_of_whole_api_key}.

But hold on, there is more. Storing a hashed value brings specific usability problems. Let’s address those now.

Presenting the API Key to users

Since we don’t store the original API key, we can show it only once to the user, at the time of creation. So be sure to alert users that it cannot be retrieved again, and they need to generate a new token if they forget to copy the API key and store it safely. You can do something like this:

How users can identify a generated API Key later

Another problem is how users identify the right API key in your console if they need to edit or revoke it. This can be solved by adding a prefix to the API key. Notice in the picture above the first 7 characters (that’s our prefix), separated by the dot.

Now you can store this prefix in the database and display it in the console so users are able to quickly identify the right API key entry, like this:

Don’t give the API Key all the power

One common mistake that API key providers make is providing one key to access everything, since it’s easy to manage. Don’t do that. Assume that a user just needs to read an email, and generates an API key. But that key now has full access to other services, including deleting records in the database.

Generate A Secure Key On First Direct App Store

The right approach is to allow the end users to properly restrict API Key access and choose specific actions that an API key can carry out. This can be done by providing scopes, where each scope represents a specific permission.

For example,

• if you need an API key to just send emails, you can generate an API key with the scope as “email.send”
• if the end user has multiple servers and each carries out a specific action, then a separate API key can be generated with a specific scope.

So while creating the API key, allow users to select what access that API key should have, as in the image below.

This way users can generate multiple API keys, each with specific rules of access for better security. And when an API request is received, you can check if the API Key has the right scope to access that API. Now the database looks something like this:

Rate limiting API keys

Generate A Secure Key On First Direct Apps

Yes, you might already know it, but it is important to rate limit requests made with specific API Keys to ensure no bad actor can take down your API servers or cause performance issues that affect your other customers. Having a proper rate limiting and monitoring solution keeps the API service healthy.

Conclusion

API keys, when built right, are still a great way to communicate with another server. As we reviewed in this article, following certain practices offers benefits to both API consumers and API providers. Hope this helps you.

Generate A Secure Key On First Direct App Free

Happy Securing your APIs!