Call Center Volume Surges Drive Scam Concerns During Pandemic

Businesses have been forced to overhaul contact centers to address the massive amounts of calls brought on by the pandemic, with some reporting an 800% increase in volume over the past year. This has invited opportunists to take advantage of the situation through phishing and social engineering. Training employees to become more conscious of attacks can only go so far in remote settings, which is why now it’s a critical time to have a secure Interactive Voice System (IVR) to help prevent attacks.

Not all IVR systems are alike, and companies that utilize these systems should be aware of the tactics that scammers use to take advantage of vulnerable automated contact center solutions. Some systems provide clues about private account information that can be exploited for attacks. Callers can use spoof programming to pretend to be a user's personal number, which provides scammers with important details such as recent activity or account balances. Basic knowledge can give malicious callers motivation to move forward with attacks, so keeping these details secure is crucial.

An IVR system with suspicious activity alerts should be a mandatory feature for all companies. Although employee training is a necessary step for preventing attacks, automated alerts and notifications can give both employees and customers a head start on the potential dangers that lurk on the web. Craft scammers can go long periods of time without being noticed, which gives them ample time to exploit users' information and get away clean. Having a defense from the start is the only way to keep criminal behavior at bay before serious hacks can begin.

The pandemic won’t be around forever, but remote activity will likely be a permanent fixture in business culture from now on. With that in mind, business and customers must become aware of how easily criminals can adapt to changes. Become familiar with the new methods that scammers are using to take advantage of IVR call features, so secure information and customer data is never jeopardized.