Worried about fraudulent calls? Build a strong voice security strategy.

In our introductory post, we established that voice communications is here to stay. As a result, enterprises need a voice security strategy to effectively develop the capabilities to manage the balance between the requirement to secure the enterprise and improve customer experience.

Many of our enterprise customers are executing digital transformations to evolve their customer experience including immediate customer self-service.  Conversational interactive voice response (IVR) and voice-enabled digital avatars offer great opportunities to grow top line revenue, while increasing customer satisfaction. 

Despite earlier industry predictions that voice communications would wane with the emergence of new digital channels, including email, text messaging, live chat, bots, social media platforms, mobile apps, intelligent virtual assistants, kiosks, etc., the reality is that voice communications continue to grow. 

Advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning, advanced analytics combined with the advancements in voice technologies (such as natural language processing and natural language understanding) have made conversations more relevant than ever. But with growth and renewed relevance comes the need to plan and secure the voice systems of the future.

To maintain security and enhance both customer and employee experience, enterprises have a vested interest in preventing all types of unwanted calls that result from a wide variety of fraudulent activities that include everything from enterprise Telephony Denial of Service (TDOS) attacks, call pumping, IVR datamining, brute force attacks, toll fraud, IVR camping, illegal robocalls, Caller ID spoofing, and social engineering. – Such calls need to be prevented at headquarters, branches, mobile environments and the contact centers they operate. Spam robocalls are just one example of fraud that was reported to be approaching 50 percent of all calls late in 2018.

Fraudsters are modern day pirates, well-financed, organized and global. They are one of the most innovative users of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the design of new fraud attack vectors and execution. 

Organizations need to build a strong voice security strategy within their digital transformation initiatives. Leaving a voice security strategy as an afterthought can subject an enterprise to threats, attacks and fraud. Such attacks increase business risks and can undermine a company’s reputation and result in revenue loss. 

It’s important to place a high priority on including a voice security strategy with both planning and design standards. And, your voice security strategy needs to be balanced with your customer experience requirements.  This approach surrounds customers with technology and practices designed to maintain trust.  

The objectives of a developing a voice security strategy are:

• Protect client or customer identities, data, and services
  
• Speed authentication for clients, customers, business partners and employees while raising security posture
•  Mitigate risks, threats and attacks  
• Comply with regulations 
• Gain efficiencies by establishing a single voice security governance and framework with all lines of business involved and invested 
• Harmonize voice authentication standards with other corporate security standards across all channels (digital and voice)

The benefits of establishing and developing voice security strategy are many, but we have highlighted the critical ones for you below:

• Helps build a superior customer experience and employee work environment
  
• Provides a unified and common security framework with alignment to business objectives for the enterprise, its stakeholders and customers
• Establishes a framework and governance model that can evolve over time  while simplifying the processes
• Helps maintain regulatory compliance 
• Improves fraud detection and prevention
• Cares for contextual privacy, strengthening trust 
• Offers the ability to quantify and qualify key metrics related to security and authentication
• Establishes a competitive differentiator for organizations seeking to provide more personalized self-service through their voice enabled channels

For enterprises doing business globally, there are additional considerations when developing your voice security strategy.  These include requirements driven by regional sovereignty, regional regulatory compliance, and  local privacy policies.

Click here for more information on how we can help you build a voice security strategy that will help protect your customers and your business.