In a recent webinar MEF’s Nicholas Rossman was joined by netnumber’s VP of Product Management Catalin Badea, and Bradley Greer, VP of Data Solutions & Product Marketing, to discuss new approaches to fighting telecommunications fraud, in particular the use of real-time, granular and normalized phone number intelligence data. Here are the key takeaways from the discussion.
The telecom industry’s race to stay one step ahead of cybercriminals is an uphill battle that continues to frustrate businesses, telecom providers and consumers.
Fortunately, industry members aren’t taking this problem lying down. But as ecosystem participants look for new ways to drive out bad actors and protect users from phishing, spoofing and more, fraudsters grow increasingly sophisticated, making the industry’s need for advanced fraud protection a top priority.
In this session, Badea and Greer discussed how the complex and fragmented nature of the telecommunications ecosystem makes combatting fraud particularly challenging. While difficult, mitigating fraud is not impossible. The key, according to the two presenters, lies in the strategic use of phone number intelligence data.
Distinguished by a wholly new industry term, NIaaS, this new netnumber capability provides a holistic, accessible platform for both delivering mission-critical phone number intelligence data and discussing the topic within the broader industry landscape.”
Why is Phone Number Data So Important? Fraudsters Zero in on the Phone Number
Today’s smartphones — and our associated phone numbers — have become much more than communication devices. They now serve as a unique identifier that companies ranging from banks to internet providers use for account authentication purposes.
While this provides convenience for customers and vendors, it has opened a virtual Pandora’s box of cybersecurity threats – unwittingly creating an entry point for fraudsters to hatch numerous schemes. Fraudsters key in on the phone number as a unique identifier that can be exploited for illegal gain.
In fact, in analyzing communications fraud activities, one constant cuts across all these malicious techniques – the phone number, explained Badea and Greer.
That makes verifying the accuracy of phone numbers in real time critical to circumventing this problem as well as to meeting growing regulatory requirements.
netnumber Unveils a New Breed of Data Solution: Number Intelligence as a Service (NIaaS)
Distinguished by a wholly new industry term, NIaaS, this new netnumber capability provides a holistic, accessible platform for both delivering mission-critical phone number intelligence data and discussing the topic within the broader industry landscape.
With NIaaS, netnumber’s range of customers can harness the power of next-generation insight into their communications ecosystem at the phone number level, helping to reduce fraud at the source by giving convenient access to key attributes like operator and line type information, porting history, phone number behaviors, reachability insights, risk assessments and much more.
Armed with this extensive real-time based data – delivered at near instantaneous speeds – carriers, enterprises, financial institutions and other netnumber customers can reliably and accurately validate phone numbers in real time from any country in the world to screen for potential fraud.
netnumber Remains a Committed Data Steward
Today, netnumber provides granular, normalized intelligence for all 10+ billion phone numbers in the world. By encapsulating this data into an as-a-service model, the company further supports a rapidly evolving communications landscape, mitigating fraud with NIaaS’ ability to optimize provisioning, routing and fraud prevention measures. This includes added protection from even sophisticated instances of Artificially Inflated Traffic (AIT), brand impersonation, account takeover, spoofing and more.
