Fraud Call Protection

Introduction

Fraudulent calls have become a severe threat to businesses and consumers alike. From small startups to large enterprises, no one is immune to the disruptive impacts of spoofing, robocalls, and sophisticated phone scams. According to the FCC, Americans lost over $29 billion to phone scams in 2021 alone. This alarming trend shows no signs of slowing down.

For businesses relying heavily on voice communications, the risks are even higher. Fraud calls can not only lead to immediate financial losses but also erode customer trust and tarnish a brand’s reputation. That’s why fraud call protection has become an indispensable investment for any organization serious about information security.

At SoftTop, we understand these challenges intimately. As a leading provider of cloud-based phone solutions, protecting our clients from fraudulent calls is one of our top priorities. In this blog, we’ll provide an in-depth look at the SoftTop Fraud Call Protection System, our multilayered defense against the growing threat of phone scams. Read on to learn more about:

• The different types of fraud calls and how they impact businesses
• Our advanced call authentication, blocking, and analytics capabilities
• The best practices you can implement to bolster fraud prevention
• Legal and regulatory considerations around phone scams
• Real-world examples of our fraud-call solutions in action

With insights from decades of telecom experience, SoftTop is uniquely positioned to secure your phone network against the latest fraud tactics. Our focus on innovation and human-centric design allows us to offer protection that is both comprehensive and intuitive. Let’s dive in!

Understanding Fraud Calls

To understand how SoftTop thwarts fraud calls, you first need to recognize the different forms they take:

Spoofing: Fraudsters falsify or “spoof” their caller ID information to impersonate legitimate businesses and individuals. Spoofing tricks people into picking up the call and trusting the scammer.

Robocalling: Illegal robocalls use autodialers to make large volumes of prerecorded voice calls. Most robocalls are scams or unwanted telemarketing.

Phishing: Deceptive callers try to trick victims into sharing sensitive information like credit card numbers or login credentials.

Wangiri, or “one-ring” scams, involve calling a number and hanging up after one ring to bait the recipient into calling back, often resulting in high per-minute fees.

IRSF (International Revenue Share Fraud) uses Internet-based calls to route high volumes of traffic through premium numbers, profiting off connection costs.

These are just a few of the many phone fraud tactics. Scammers are constantly innovating new ways to take advantage of vulnerabilities in traditional phone networks.

Some troubling statistics:

• Over 59.4 billion robocalls were placed in the U.S. in 2021, a 62% increase over 2020.
• Phone scams cost Americans $29.8 billion in losses last year.
• 26.6 million Americans lost money directly through phone fraud in 2021.
• Business fraud losses amounted to $6.9 billion in 2021.

As these numbers show, no business can afford to ignore the very real dangers of fraud calls in 2023 and beyond. Without the right protections, your organization is vulnerable to large-scale disruption.

How Fraud Calls Can Affect Your Business

If a fraudulent call makes it through to your employees, the impacts can be far-reaching.

Financial loss: fraudsters are cunning social engineers ready to fool employees into making unauthorized transfers or giving up valuable data. A single breach can result in massive losses.

Reputational damage: Customer trust is difficult to earn back once compromised through fraud. The stigma of a scam can linger for years.

Productivity impact: Investigating scam calls takes time away from your team’s core work. Morale also suffers from constant disruptions.

Increased liability: Regulators increasingly hold businesses liable for breaches linked to unprotected voice infrastructure. Fines and lawsuits can quickly accumulate.

Poor customer experience: frustrated callers will abandon your business if they have to navigate robocall menus and verification hurdles.

Regulatory non-compliance: New telecom regulations demand stringent protections against spoofing, robocalling, and other scams. Falling behind puts you at legal risk.

Third-party risk: Fraud calls to your partners and vendors can lead to crises that reverberate across your wider business ecosystem.

The potential damages highlight why a comprehensive, multi-layered approach to fraud prevention is an urgent investment.

SoftTop’s Fraud Call Protection Solutions

SoftTop’s Fraud Call Protection System leverages an integrated combination of protocols, analytics, and policies to keep threats at bay.

Call Authentication and Verification

The starting point is establishing trust in every inbound call’s source identity—a process called caller ID authentication and verification.

SoftTop achieves this through:

• STIR/SHAKEN implementation: We fully comply with the STIR/SHAKEN framework, an industry standard for verifying calls between networks. Calls are signed cryptographically to prevent spoofing.
• Caller ID verification: Our network cross-checks all inbound caller IDs against legitimate user accounts and external data sources.
• Unauthenticated call handling: We can configure policies to block or flag unverified calls for further screening. No spoofed call goes unchecked.

AI-Driven Call Analytics

With call provenance established, SoftTop layers on real-time call analytics to identify scams:

• Voice biometrics: AI analyzes thousands of call variables, like rhythms and frequencies, to detect fraudulent voices.
• Pattern recognition: machine learning identifies spikes in abnormal call traffic, suspicious behavior, and known scam patterns.
• Behavioral analysis: models profile legitimate call patterns to flag anomalies in real-time, preventing attacks.

Real-Time Call Blocking and Filtering

Suspicious calls trigger an array of blocking and filtering policies, including:

• Blacklisting: Calls from known fraudulent numbers are automatically blocked. Our blacklist database contains over 1 million entries.
• Robocall blocking: Calls from autodialers are flagged and blocked using fingerprinting techniques.
• Automated screening: risk-based IVR screening places additional verification requirements on potentially fraudulent calls.
• Whitelisting: Calls from numbers identified as always trusted are allowed through. Useful for key accounts.

SMS and Text Message Protection

We expand protection beyond voice channels.

• SMS phishing prevention: – Messages with dangerous links, attachments, or content are automatically blocked.
• Secured 2FA: Allow legitimate SMS two-factor authentication without opening verification channels to scammers.

Third-Party Integrations

Finally, we enable seamless integration with complementary security layers:

• Unified platform: Our phone system integrates natively with our fraud prevention toolkit. There are no compatibility issues.
• CRM integration: customer profiles from your CRM automatically sync with our blacklist, analytics, and authentication protocols.
• API integrations: We partner with leading call validation APIs to enhance data on suspicious numbers.

This multifaceted approach achieves protection far greater than the sum of its parts. Together, the layers close gaps that fraudsters exploit for more fragmented solutions.

Best Practices for Fraud Prevention

While SoftTop’s system handles the technical heavy lifting, following security best practices strengthens your fraud prevention further.

Educate employees: Training staff to identify common social engineering tactics makes them less prone to phone fraud. Roleplaying exercises with common scam scenarios help build intuition. Regular refreshers keep awareness top of mind.

Cautious call handling: Establish policies requiring employees to verify unfamiliar callers before discussing sensitive information or making financial transactions. Setting this cultural precedent is invaluable.

Limit data sharing: restrict access to confidential data within employee groups on a need-to-know basis. The less information available, the lower the fraud risk.

Implement MFA: enforce multi-factor authentication across all channels, especially high-risk transactions. MFA creates additional verification hurdles for fraudsters.

Update systems regularly. Fraudsters probe systems constantly for new weaknesses to exploit. Keeping software regularly updated closes those holes.

Monitor activity. Analytics models trained on call data will spot anomalies suggestive of social engineering schemes. Reviewing logs daily improves response time.

With the right technology and engagement strategy, your organization can stay resilient against even sophisticated fraudsters.

Legal and Regulatory Considerations

Robocalls, spoofing, and other forms of voice scams continue to proliferate in the absence of strong enforcement. However, the regulatory landscape is beginning to shift in favor of better consumer protections.

• The TRACED Act increases FCC powers to levy fines as high as $10,000 per robocall on offenders.
• STIR/SHAKEN standards for spoof detection are now legally enforceable by the FCC.
• GDPR in the EU regulates the use of certain biometric data, like voiceprints, that underpin analytics.
• The TCPA restricts robocalling and auto-dialing without clear consumer consent.

Firms not taking fraud prevention seriously risk facing hefty regulatory penalties or lawsuits. We monitor regulations closely and ensure compliance across all regions where we operate.

Case Studies: SoftTop in Action

Don’t just take our word; see examples of SoftTop’s fraud prevention in the real world:

Use Case 1: Mid-size Healthcare Provider

• Challenge: Patients received spoofed calls requesting personal health information for billing fraud. Scammers had access to patient names and convincingly posed as hospital collectors.
• Solution: SoftTop implemented STIR/SHAKEN to authenticate calls, configured AI analytics to compare voices, and monitored traffic for spoofing spikes.
• Result: Spoofing attempts were detected immediately and blocked without disturbing patients. The voice ID model identified repeat scam callers.

Use Case 2: Fortune 500 Retailer

• Challenge: Seasonal robocall surges during holidays disrupted operations in stores and supply chain centers. Employees wasted over 100,000 hours annually managing nuisance calls.
• Solution: SoftTop blocked robocalls using fingerprinting and blacklist data. IVR screening sent high-risk calls to voicemail.
• Result: Robocall volume decreased by 92% during holiday peaks. Customer complaints about call disruptions dropped significantly.

These wins demonstrate how SoftTop’s multilayered protections work in the real world against constantly evolving threats.

The Future of Fraud Protection

As scammers grow more sophisticated, SoftTop never stops innovating to stay ahead.

• Expanded biometrics: More voiceprint and speech pattern data will train AI models to achieve near-human accuracy in call screening.
• Blockchain identities: Distributed ledger technology will enable near-instant cross-network caller verification to stop spoofing.
• Call trace forensics: Advanced telemetry will pinpoint fraud sources to enable law enforcement disruption of scam centers.
• Predictive behavioral analytics: AI will better anticipate zero-day social engineering techniques before they spread.

At SoftTop, we take our industry-leading position seriously. Customers enjoy innovations in fraud protection every year. Our commitment to R&D ensures we maintain the highest standards and the severest barriers against scams.

Tables:

Table 1: Fraud Call Statistics 2022

Type of Fraud Call	Call Volume (Billions)	Financial Loss (Billions)
Robocalls	59.4	$29.8 total
Wangiri Scams	$0.4	n/a
Routing/trunking fraud	n/a	$4.5
IRS Impersonation	n/a	$2.4
Tech support scams	n/a	$1.5
Romance scams	n/a	$1.3

Table 2: SoftTop Fraud Call Protection System Overview

Protection Layer	Capabilities
Caller Authentication	STIR/SHAKEN, Caller ID matching, CNAM lookup, blockchain identities
Call Analytics	Voice biometrics, call pattern analysis, and behavioral modeling
Real-time Mitigation	Blacklisting, whitelisting, robocall blocking, and screening policies
Messaging Security	SMS phishing protection and 2FA verification
Integrations	Unified platform, CRM sync, API partnerships

Key Notes:

• Fraud calls like spoofing, robocalling, and phishing are a massive threat to businesses, with over $29 billion lost to phone scams in 2021.
• Unprotected voice networks can lead to financial loss, reputational damage, productivity decline, increased liability, and poor customer experience.
• SoftTop’s multilayered Fraud Call Protection System uses STIR/SHAKEN, AI analytics, call blocking, SMS security, and integration with CRMs.
• Ongoing monitoring, software updates, cautious policies, and employee education complement SoftTop’s technical protections.
• Changing regulations like the TRACED Act impose penalties on businesses that don’t take robust measures to prevent fraud calls.

Key Takeaways:

• The scale and sophistication of phone fraud continue to rise, making fraud call protection a necessity.
• SoftTop’s solution offers comprehensive protection spanning call authentication, real-time blocking, messaging security, and predictive analytics.
• Regular training and prudent policies strengthen fraud defenses by making employees less vulnerable to social engineering.
• Reviewing call logs and anomalies regularly improves threat response time and keeps protection effective as scams evolve.
• Partnering with specialists like SoftTop is the most efficient way to implement state-of-the-art fraud prevention without maintenance overhead.

Conclusion

Left unmanaged, fraud calls pose an existential threat to your business—financially, operationally, and reputationally. But with SoftTop’s multilayered Fraud Call Protection System, your organization gains a robust, continuously advancing shield against phone scams.

Sophisticated authentication and call analytics immediately halt fraud attempts in their tracks. Real-time call blocking, screening, and filtering ensure scams never reach your team. Ongoing monitoring and partnerships reveal new threats as they emerge. And strict regulatory compliance eliminates any liability risk on your end.

Don’t leave your communication channels vulnerable to exploitation. With SoftTop as your partner, you can rest assured that every call reaching your business is 100% verified and scam-free. Your phone network works for you, not against you.

Reach out today to learn more about our Fraud Call Protection System. We’re proud to offer ironclad security you can rely on 24/7. Let’s connect and explore how SoftTop can safeguard your business.