For some bank IT managers, last fall’s release of federal guidelines for validating the identities of online users helped catalyze ongoing efforts to adopt so-called strong authentication measures. But a majority of U.S. banks appear unprepared to meet the Dec. 31 deadline by which they’re supposed to comply with the guidelines, several analysts said this week. “Most banks haven’t done much with [the guidelines] because there is still some confusion as to what needs to be done,” said George Tubin, an analyst at TowerGroup in Needham, Mass. Preston Woods, the company’s chief information security officer, said the release of the guidelines last October by the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council gave a push to a strong authentication initiative that Zions had already started.