Lautz says.
Analytics to the Rescue
While there has been a lot of talk about voice biometrics for security, Lautz feels that it's too cost prohibitive for "the vast majority of organizations."
Instead, he believes that speech and business analytics are cost-effective tools to add to a contact center's arsenal to combat contact center fraud. By using key indicator phrases, patterns and trends can emerge—for example, a contact center might see that someone called in eight times to open a new account but the caller offers erroneous information when asked for a piece of information that they should know.
For example, a key phrase might be, "What is your Social Security number?" If a person responds by saying, "Hold on a moment," it might be a problem. "What person doesn't know their Social Security number?" Lautz asks.
Using business analytics tools, such types of patterns can be identified, and such calls may signal a need for a manager review to determine if there are indicators of potential fraud.
"Customers can give very valuable data and you can leverage that," Lautz says.
Protect Your Infrastructure
Contact center security also helps at a physical level, as everything can be traced to data, Lautz says. And given the headlines about breaches, a lot of focus is placed on securing networks, but Lautz says that people are starting to realize that an entrance point for fraud can begin on an on-premises phone system.
Part of the problem is ignorance—a lot of times people don't understand the security requirements necessary to protect on-premises systems from the outside world. Lautz believes that being proactive goes a long way toward protecting against fraudsters and says that the time for companies to institute security measures should not be once they discover fraud but rather before it occurs.
"There [are] people who are on the Internet all day long who are looking for phone systems that they can exploit," Lautz says. "There [are] millions of calls a day from people who are trying to gain access to some of these phone systems and business lines, and businesses end up with very expensive phone bills, which they're liable for. If your infrastructure isn't secured properly, it's a matter of time before this happens."
In 2015, Lautz believes that companies will become more cognizant of the importance of security within their contact centers, and that this will be a bigger factor in IT purchasing. "Buyers are becoming far more knowledgeable about the importance of [security]. They're partnering with good vendors to help them meet security requirement, so contact centers have to become security experts."