Attempts by fraudsters to gain sensitive customer information are on the rise, and call center operators are often the ones under attack. Too often, a caller will stay on the line long enough to use social engineering tricks to persuade an operator into releasing just enough information for that caller to call again later and gain access to the accounts, often resulting in subscription fraud. These delinquents are indeed becoming smarter about how they gain access to services, but two tools that call centers can employ to counteract these imposters are phone printing and voice biometric technologies.
According to an article by Avivah Litan on Forbes, traditional security measures are easily circumvented by the kinds of criminals who regularly attempt to game call centers. For example, PIN numbers used to authenticate criminals are often re-used across different accounts by the same user, and it would only take a single slip-up to release that number into the wrong hands. Caller ID verification techniques are easily bypassed through anonymizer services that mask the origin point of a call, and knowledge-based authentication is easy to acquire through social engineering. In fact, users are often prone to forgetting their own answers to authentication questions, while a fraudster is more apt to remember stolen information correctly.
Phone printing is an excellent solution that ensures that a call is actually coming from the appropriate device and in a reasonable location. Phone (News - Alert) printing works in a manner similar to device-fingerprinting for online services, and will alert a call center operator if a call is coming from an unusual device or in an unusual location. A strange location might not be as suspect coming from a mobile phone, but being five miles away is far less suspicious than a call coming from another country. Phone printing can also determine the differences between a cell, landline or even VoIP call.
When that fails, Voice Biometrics is able to identify users based off of their speech patterns. Not only can a legitimate subscriber's voice be identified to enhance security, but criminals that are identified as such can also be blacklisted. Once their voice patterns are identified, these fraudulent users can have their biometrics shared with other call centers, ensuring that they will never be a threat again.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson