[December 01, 2009] Nexidia and Semafone Team for Fraud and Identity Theft Prevention Tweet Dec 01, 2009 (Close-Up Media via COMTEX) -- Nexidia, a supplier of audio search and speech analytics solutions, and Semafone, a UK contact centre payments security provider, announced a partnership to address fraud and identity theft in the contact centre environment. The companies explained that with the tightening of security controls on the high street and online, the contact centre is now seen by fraudsters as the next "easy option." The huge volumes of credit card details being recorded and stored daily in contact centres across the globe make it a prime target for organised fraudsters. The companies stated that the partnership between Nexidia and Semafone will ensure that past and future credit card details are inaccessible by contact centre staff. Semafone's technical solution delivers secure voice transactions during the live call and ensures no new credit card details are stored. While historical voice recordings of credit card numbers can be quickly searched and located within the vast stores of an organisation's recorded data using Nexidia Enterprise Speech Intelligence (ESI) solution and easily redacted. This combined solution tackles card fraud and identity theft in contact centres with an approach that keeps customer data secure, the companies reported. Tim Critchley, managing director at Semafone, said, "This combined total solution is a very timely offering to the contact centre marketplace. It addresses a major issue for any organisation with a contact centre taking customer payments over the phone. We are delighted to be partnering with Nexidia whose responsiveness to changing market demands closely mirrors our own." With the introduction of new Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) which are currently being imposed on the contact centre industry, companies need new methods for dealing with the sensitive authentication data - which includes the CAV2/CVC2/CVV2/CID/CW numbers - that are passed during a transaction. The Semafone solution makes paying by phone secure by ensuring that no card information is ever seen or heard by the contact centre agent. The agent and caller are never disconnected from each other, and are able to talk freely throughout the card transaction. This is achieved using SecureMode, which allows the call - and critically the call recording - to continue as normal while the customer enters their credit card information using their phone keypad. For complete security Semafone masks the DTMF digits entered by the caller so they are never heard by the call centre agent nor recorded on the contact recording system. Existing call recording systems record all voice traffic and most organisations keep their recordings for many years; indeed Financial Services Authority (FSA) regulations stipulate the retention of call recordings for seven years, which can amount to millions of transactions. Adherence to the PCI DSS for these organisations and the extraction of credit card references in this vast store of data presents a major challenge. Nexidia said its ESI enables customers to extract deep and meaningful business intelligence directly from their recorded contact centre interactions. "Nexidia's proven ability to accurately search vast volumes of call recordings and Semafone's innovative secure transaction software provides a formidable solution that addresses not only the pressing compliance issues but also the industry credibility issues that are rapidly arising from this perceived 'easy option,'" said Jonathan Wax, vice president of EMEA Nexidia. "We are delighted to be partnered with Semafone in addressing fraud in the contact centre. The pressing need, especially in financial services, provides us with a major inroad into this key market sector." ((Comments on this story may be sent to [email protected])) [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]