DEEPFAKES
ILLUSTRATION PROVIDED BY ADOBE STOCK
DEFENDING AGAINST DEEPFAKES
CONTACT CENTERS ARE IN FRAUDSTERS’ CROSSHAIRS.
In the past, a contact center agent could be reasonably secure in knowing who was at the other end of the line. And if they weren’ t, answers to security questions, a verbal password, or a request to send a one-time passcode( OTP) would solve the issue.
Those days are gone, as voice deepfakes – in which a real person’ s voice is cloned from snippets of it – is one of the biggest risks facing modern businesses and their contact centers.
Today’ s attacks are increasingly sophisticated, putting contact centers at greater risk than ever before. In fact, our recent survey of contact center business leaders revealed that nearly 60 % experienced incidents of stolen personal information used to bypass knowledge-based authentication. Additionally, 54 % of them report cases of spoofing used to impersonate legitimate customers( see adjacent article).
BY RICHARD TSAI, TRANSUNION
FRAUDSTER GOALS
Fraudsters approach the contact center with several goals in mind. Some want to validate or enrich data breach data sets that they plan to sell on the dark web. In this instance, someone with a long list of data breach information will call contact centers to verify active or valid accounts, or that the victims’ phone numbers are still known to that organization.
Meanwhile, other fraudsters may try to socially engineer the agents to collect more personally identifiable information( PII) they can add to their existing data, which they then sell for a higher price on the dark web. This enriched data set becomes more valuable for crime rings to plot out larger and more successful attacks.
Yet another tactic of threat actors is to use the PII of the recently deceased, taking multiple pathways to gain access to the victim ' s account and ultimately their funds – including, you guessed it-- through the contact center.
The victim doesn’ t have to be deceased, of course; the PII of billions of people is readily available for purchase on the dark web. A lawsuit last year alleged that the personal financial data of nearly three billion people may have been compromised.
PIVOTAL ROLE OF CONTACT CENTERS
Since contact center agents are trained to be helpful, they can be easily manipulated and are a favorite target for threat actors. In fact, contact centers are such a profitable business for fraudsters that crime rings are happy to set up their own outbound contact centers to target them.
SINCE CONTACT CENTER AGENTS ARE TRAINED TO BE HELPFUL, THEY CAN BE EASILY MANIPULATED AND ARE A FAVORITE TARGET FOR THREAT ACTORS.
32 CONTACT CENTER PIPELINE