Your Security Is Important to Us

Your security and privacy are of the utmost importance to Sunmark. That’s why we use multiple levels of security and choose trusted partners to provide online services, designed especially to protect your sensitive information. Your information is protected both online and otherwise using technology and physical measures employed by Sunmark and our trusted partners.

We pride ourselves in keeping your online experience safe with the use multiple technologies and safety practices:

SSL Encryption

Sunmark’s website makes use of a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol connection between our web servers and your computer.  This protocol is designed for transmitting data back and forth securely. Upon connecting to our website, an SSL connection is negotiated.  This means that not only will the data between the connection of your computer and our servers is encrypted, but also that a third party can’t hack that connection.

Sunmark uses a “high assurance” SSL certificate issued by Thawte, which is only granted after a rigorous verification process.  This gives Sunmark some further abilities to ensure your connection is safe.  When connected to Sunmark’s website, your web browser’s address bar will identify the connection is indeed with Sunmark’s web servers by displaying a green bar, or a highlighted area, displaying Sunmark’s name.  Clicking on our name in any standard web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, or Google Chrome) will supply you with more information about our security certificate.

Firewalls

All firewalls are located in a controlled environment. All data and access to our servers are filtered by the perimeter firewalls before reaching any web servers. System integrity checks of the firewalls and other network perimeter access control systems are performed on a regular basis.

Online Banking Login

Your password is how we verify your authorization to use Online Banking. We verify that only authorized persons can log in to Online Banking by requiring you to enter your password. When you submit your password, it is compared with the password we have stored in our secure data center. We allow you to enter your password incorrectly three times before your account will be locked. In order to reinitialize the account, you must contact us.

Additional Security Features

We provide a number of additional security features in Online Banking. Online Banking will “time out” after a specified period of inactivity. This prevents curious persons from continuing your home banking session in case you have left your PC unattended without logging out. You may set the time out period in the User Options screen of online banking. However, we recommend that you always log out when you are done with your online banking session.

While the architecture is too complex to explain here, it is important to point out that the computers that store your actual account information are not connected to the Internet. The requests you make through the Internet are handled by online banking servers, which retrieve the information you requested from a mainframe via proxy-based firewall servers. These servers act as the go-between you and the mainframe computer.

Phishing Information

What is Phishing?

Phishing is an attempt to steal sensitive personal or financial information by masquerading as a representative of a trusted company. Typically, phishing victims will receive an e-mail that seems to be from a legitimate company asking recipients to click on a link and enter details such as account or password information at a website.

How to Avoid Phishing

Sunmark will NEVER under any circumstances send an unsolicited email requesting personal or account-related information. Never provide sensitive information at a website unless you have initiated navigation to that site.

Reporting Phishing

We appreciate you taking the time to report a suspicious or unwanted email that appears to come from Sunmark.

To report phishing, contact us at memberservice@sunmark.org.