The financial institution nightmare is when a legitimate accountis taken over by cyber-criminals – then looted.

The fourth Commercial Account Takeover Survey from the Financial Services– Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC)puts real numbers around how often this occurs.

The upbeat news in the survey: financial institutions have gotten more skilled inpreventing account takeovers and in preventing funds from leavingthe institution, per FS-ISAC.

The bad news in the survey (conducted for FS-ISAC by theAmerican Bankers Association and which included 100 financialservices firms) — is that account takeovers are stilloccurring.

The frequency in the current period amounts to 2.11 per 1,000commercial customers in the first half of 2012. That comparesto 3.42 per 1,000 in 2011, as reported in an earlier survey.

Of all reported account takeovers: 65% in the first halfof 2012 did not involve monetary transactions. That comparesto 53% in 2011.

Nine percent of account takeovers resulted in funds leaving theinstitution. That compares to 12% in 2011.

In instances where money was fraudulently transferred out of theinstitution, 82% in the first half of 2012 involved wire transfers(with 14% ACH and 4% check writing and other). That comparesto 2011 numbers of 91%, 9% and 0% in 2011, respectively

FS-ISAC said that several steps have proven effective inreducing account takeover fraud. It pointed to: Customereducation; temporarily shutting down affected online customer'saccess;

Manual review of ACH/wire transactions above a certain dollaramount; and analysis of customer logincharacteristics/patterns.