An industry group representing some of nation’s largest banks sent a private alert to its members last week warning about a surge in reported cybercrime targeting small to mid-sized business. The advisory, issued by the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, recommends that commercial banking customers take some fairly rigorous steps to secure their online banking accounts. For example, the group recommends that commercial banking customers “carry out all online banking activity from a standalone, hardened, and locked-down computer from which e-mail and Web browsing is not possible.” Such a system might be a virgin install of Windows with all the proper updates, using something like Microsoft steady state. Even smarter would be a Mac, or some flavor of Linux, or even a Live CD distribution of Linux (after shutdown, all changes are erased). Why take such extreme precautions? The alert indicates that the sophistication, stealth, and sheer volume