The most obvious way to meet the guidance, issued by the U.S. Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC), would have been to issue one-time password devices or set up another form of two-factor authentication. But last summer, when I did a preliminary evaluation of security offerings at the country's largest banks, I was pretty unimpressed. (See Two-Factor Too Scarce at Consumer Banks.)

Since then, I've given up on getting a one-time-password device, and have accepted the fact that banks are instead moving toward what might diplomatically be called "creative" authentication. (See Strong Authentication: Success Factors.) Given that man-in-the-middle attacks can circumvent two-factor authentication, a combination of device authentication, additional security questions and extra fraud controls doesn't seem like a bad approach.

But, I wondered, almost six months past the FFIEC deadline, what are banks telling customers about online security? As the chief financial officer of Chateau Scalet—and as a working mother about to have baby No. 2—I wanted to know if any of them could offer me enough assurance that I would take the online banking plunge as a way to simplify my life. I decided it was time to update my research from last year.

I called the call centers at each of the top three banks, identified myself as a customer with a checking and savings account, and told them I was interested in online banking but concerned about security. The point, yes, was to see what type of security each bank had in place. More than that, however, I wanted to see how well each bank was able to communicate about security through its call center. After all, what good is good security if you can't explain it to your customers? Here's what I learned.