Telecommunication companies manage a large amount of sensitive customer information. With the rapid increase of mobile users and the demand to meet customer expectations, telcos continuously expand their services.
Telcos have complex infrastructures to cater to different digital identities, making them vulnerable to cyberattacks. In the first six months of 2019, the U.S. saw 3,800 data breaches, exposing 4.1 billion records.
One of the best ways to lower the risk of a data breach is to have an effective identity and access management system (IAM) in place, along with its modern improvements. This can significantly improve and strengthen a telecom company’s cybersecurity for a safer and more secure access to sensitive information.
Here are a few things you need to know about IAM and how telecommunication providers can benefit from it.
Why is Identity and Access Management Important to Telcos?
Identity and access management is a system that lets you manage and define users’ roles, whether as employees or customers, establishing a system of permissions and access based on their needs and roles.
Since telecommunication companies handle sensitive customer information, they are a prime target for cyberattacks. This makes it absolutely essential to know your organization has an identity management system in place to make it easier to verify them. However, using knowledge-based authentication is not enough to protect customers from scams such as SIM swapping. By integrating multi-factor authentication into your IAM platform, you can establish a robust cybersecurity framework against external and insider threats.
With the massive amount of data collected today and the increase in services, devices, and channels, regulations have emphasized the need to implement more robust data privacy measures. These reasons have presented the need to adopt a robust IAM system that can help meet customer expectations, thus growing revenue through solid customer relationships built on trust.
Ways Telcos can Benefit from Modern Identity and Access Management Improvements
Easy system access
IAM utilizing passwordless login can help ease system access for end-users by letting them log in with different methods, such as with a selfie. This passwordless login feature also provides quicker access to accounts for telco call center representatives because the end-user can verify through highly accurate biometrics, as opposed to knowledge-based authentication questions where the answers are easy to steal.
Help handle large-scale customer volume
The vast number of data that telcos handle is overwhelming. Moreover, legacy identity management solutions can be costly and hard to maintain, resulting in slow performance that leaves you vulnerable. With updated cloud-based IAM technology, you can streamline customer identity verification for support calls to help handle a massive scale of mobile users.
Ease of account creation using Q5id
With Q5id, your users and customers can easily prove their identity with a combination of government-issued ID and biometric verification. The guided app enrollment process enables them to do this even when at home—all they have to do is follow a few prompts and verify liveness with a human operator.
Call center agents can easily verify identities
Modern IAM systems confirm that the user is who say they are by authenticating their information against an existing set of verified users. This helps create a seamless workflow where authorized personnel, such as call center agents, can access the correct information for your customers. This also helps them handle secure authentication processes that may include remote verification of an identity in such a way that it’s virtually impossible to steal. The built-in protection against fraud or credential theft protects both the end-user—your customer—and your business.
Users can remotely approve transactions, new accounts, etc.
Many companies have utilized multi-factor authentication to boost their cybersecurity. This can help prevent theft, fraud, and such in the online space. Incorporating biometric authentication to verify or approve high-value or sensitive transactions improves your cybersecurity stance as well as demonstrates to your customers how seriously you take securing their data.
Quick in-person verification with a proven identity
Over the last few years, there has been a rise in SIM-swap scams. Scammers take over your phone number by linking it to another SIM card, typically executed through a social engineering ploy that takes advantage of under-prepared or untrained customer care representatives. This access to your phone number allows them to log into or reset all the digital accounts linked to it. With the help of effective IAM solutions, agents on the line can have easy and secure methods to verify your identity. It will then be difficult for the scammer to change anything in your account.
Improved account security means improved customer trust
Telcos manage a great deal of sensitive customer information such as bank accounts, PINs, and phone numbers. As cybercrime continues to increase, having robust cybersecurity measures against threats from inside and out of the company is a must. Updating your identity and access management systems can help limit employee access to information based on their roles, which prevents insider hacking or other forms of sabotage. Meanwhile, it is easier to identify your customers to prevent identity theft. Having a robust cybersecurity system makes you more dependable, helping you build stronger relationships with your clients.
Better Safe Than Sorry
These days, robust cybersecurity allows users to access their accounts safely. This makes it necessary for telecommunication companies to acquire effective identity management services to have the right tools to keep their infrastructure safe from data breaches.
If you’re looking for quality IAM services to combat data breaches and cyberattacks, Q5id offers customizable solutions that best fit your identity and access management needs.
Contact us today and let’s talk about how we can help you.
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