About Security

Northwest Georgia Credit Union considered security to be of prime importance in establishing an internet home banking solution. Northwest Georgia Credit Union is committed to ensuring that your accounts and personal information are kept confidential and secure, and we have taken the necessary steps to protect it. The various security measures utilized by home banking are discussed below.

An important security device called the Netscape Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is provided in your browser. The SSL protocol protects information that runs across computer networks by encryption. Encrypted information means that it is encoded using algorithms that scramble the data so that it cannot be read or altered between servers.

Northwest Georgia Credit Union uses a cryptographic (digital certificate) key from VeriSign to secure data sent between our server and your browser. Whenever you use NWGACU Online, our server responds to your data transmission by sending this key that is then authenticated by your browser. This communication process encrypts the data sent by you and we decrypt it when we receive it. We also use firewalls to protect your accounts from unauthorized access from outside the credit union. These firewalls act as a buffer to verify the source and destination of transmissions from outside networks.

Another security measure is the password you use to access your accounts through NWGACU Online and Teller Line. This password can be changed by you at anytime. Therefore, it is important that you protect your password and not allow anyone to gain knowledge of it. If you are not using NWGACU Online from your home, we recommend that you logout of NWGACU Online and exit the internet by closing your browser completely before leaving your computer unattended to prevent unauthorized access. Logout by clicking "End Session". The account information you have viewed in NWGACU Online remains in your browser's memory. If you leave the browser running, other people can use the "Back" button to view your account information and conduct transactions.

About Cookies

Cookies are a very useful tool in maintaining state variables on the Web. Since HTTP is a "stateless" (non-persistent) protocol, it is impossible to differentiate between visits to a web site or page, and keep track of security codes and operations performed and being performed, unless the server can somehow "mark" a visitor.

This is done by storing a piece of information in the visitor's browser with "cookies". Cookies can store database information, custom page settings, security clearance information, requests being worked on, or just about anything that would make a site interactive and customizable. NWGACU Online must use cookies in order to perform its complex security and database operations. An Internet application like NWGACU Online would not be possible without cookie technology.

Some cookies have expiration dates. When a cookie expires, your browser will simply erase it from your hard drive. Depending on where it came from, a cookie may expire tomorrow, next week, or next year. Cookies with an expiration date are generally known as "persistent cookies," meaning they stick around for a while. A cookie that doesn't contain an expiration date will only last as long as your browser stays open. These are called "session cookies." When you close your browser, all session cookies silently disappear. NWGACU Online tends to use session cookies.

In the ongoing effort to keep up with the changes in technology and the demands to keep sensitive data secure, NWGACU Online now requires that your internet browser use 128-bit data encryption. To better serve you the member regarding online access to your account information we recommend that you use the latest version of your internet browser, be it Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, or whatever browser you use to access the web site.