NICE Systems, an Israel-headquartered software solutions provider, announced last week the launch of a contact (call) center fraud prevention product for Russia.
The developers have designed a tool to foil sham ID use in those areas of the banking, trading and financial sectors where closing a transaction or making a purchase requires a customer’s voice authorization.
Call center swindles are believed to be on the rise. Hoaxers, tricking customer service agents at a contact center into a false sense of legitimacy, tend to choose for their scams the centers that lack advanced customer identification systems and repeatedly ask a caller for his or her name, birthday or phone number – the kind of data easily obtainable from a variety of open sources such as social networks.
To keep fakes at bay, the new system pins down fraudulent callers by checking their unique voice print. The software taps into a database of voice biometrics, updated on a real-time basis even as a call continues, to rapidly cross-reference each caller against what the developer terms a “watch list” of known con artists. For easier exposure of fraudsters, the database also references benchmark emotions and typical talk patterns associated with them.
In an exchange with RIA Novosti, Tamar Sharir, NICE’s director for counter-fraud solutions, admitted that the system is not flawless. However, in-house tests and ongoing operations in a number of global financial institutions, including five US and UK banks, have revealed a maximum error rate of 1.15%. In the US, an average of 13 out of 15 fraud alerts that the system issues prove true, she said.
“Give me $8, and they’ll believe I’m Warren Buffet”
NICE Systems is optimistic about its Russian prospects and hopes to be instrumental in addressing the country’s current financial sector security snags.
Russia is home to a sprawling black market for phony “personal identification,” especially in areas where foreigners are involved, said Bogdan Vovchenko of Group-IB, a Russian IT security company, in an exchange with RIA. For a modest $8 per call fee a “professional” impostor offers to “pass himself off as a genuine client” by calling a contact center in English and fishing for information his customer wants. Tapping into a con man’s French, German or Dutch language skills would cost such a bargain hunter a couple of extra bucks.
According to Vovchenko, the Russian language is somewhat below the radar of such black market sharks, as there’s little or no necessity for voice authorization in Russia or the former Soviet Union.
