Wheatland Bank, of Spokane, says it has entered into a partnership with Sunnyvale, Calif.-based IronKey Inc. that will enable it to provide added protection to its business customers and safeguard their accounts from financial malware attacks.

It says it will provide its online business banking customers with IronKey Trusted Access, a secure browser—branded as Wheatland Secure—that will help prevent identity theft, payment fraud, and banking account takeovers.

"The greatest risk facing online business banking customers today is the security of their own PCs and networks," says Susan Horton, president, CEO, and chairwoman of Wheatland Bank. "With Wheatland Secure, we are offering our customers a way to conduct online banking transactions on a dedicated, secure, and isolated platform that's convenient for them to use."

Dave Jevans, IronKey's founder and chairman, says that company's system isolates clients' online access in a bank-managed environment that's independent of the clients' PCs, so it protects them even if their PCs have been compromised with malware. Users launch their online banking tools through a secure portal accessed from their desktops.