ST. PETERSBURG, Fla.—Beefing up call center defenses is a critical step now in protecting members’ sensitive data, asserts PSCU.
Analysts have stated that as EMV takes hold in the U.S., crooks are turning less to stealing money from plastic and instead focusing on taking over financial accounts.
As CUToday.info reported, Chicago-based Alliant CU was recently victimized by a large identity theft attack in which several-hundred bogus accounts were allegedly opened at the CU.
Account takeover efforts often begin with crooks phishing for data through call centers, noted Brian Scott, SVP of sales and solutions consulting at PSCU. The CUSO recently entered into a partnership with Pindrop, an expert in voice security and caller authentication, to identify and prevent call center authentication fraud.
“A lot a fraud now is starting with social engineering as criminals begin building account profiles,” said Scott. “If you look at the actual fraud percentage, this area of fraud is getting bigger.”
Platform Analyzes 150 Characteristics Of A Call
Pindrop alerts PSCU’s call center team of a potential fraudster call even before an employee picks up the phone, explained Scott.
“The platform really helps our call center be alert to fraud attempts,” said Scott. “They are alerted before they pick up a call that the person on the other end might be a thief. For example, Pindrop does multiple things—it checks if the phone number the person is calling from is known to be fraudulent, the quality of the line, if it’s a robo dialer, all before a live agent takes the call.”
Brian Scott, PSCU
Pindrop’s platform analyzes 150 characteristics of a call to create a unique audio “fingerprint,” that reveals the type of phone the caller is using, such as mobile, landline or Voice over IP, the geographic location of the call’s origin and whether the caller has been “seen” before, explained Scott. Pindrop’s technology stops 80% of all phone fraud with less than a 1% false positive rate, he said.
Scott explained that each call receives a fraud score, ranging from 1-100, that the call center agent sees.
“If the score is 89, for example, that is petty high. So the agent will then ask entry level questions to validate that the person on the other end of the line is who they say they are,” said Scott. “If the fraud score is 15, then those questions won’t be asked.”
If the fraud score is high, staff are trained to ask questions that the caller should quickly know the answers to and not hesitate with their responses.
“I was in the call center the other day and I saw an agent take a call that had a high fraud score,” said Scott. “So they asked the supposed cardholder on the line what is the closest elementary school to their home. That is a different type of question a real cardholder should easily know the answer to and be able to quickly respond, as opposed to asking for the person’s mother’s maiden name, information the crook could have already at his fingertips. So if the crook can’t answer the question quickly, that tells you something.”
Training Changes
Scott said that in this new era of heightened fraud, call center training has had to adapt.
“It is focused more on telling who the other person is on the other end of the line—do they sound nervous, do they sound like they are reading form something,” said Scott. “This type of training is helping stop more fraudsters, and now with the addition of Pindrop it helps us be even smarter.”