High-profile instances of credit card- and contact center-fraud has made protection of each customer’s private information and personal data paramount. A newly announced partnership between West Interactive and Eckoh directly addresses the challenges that arise when firms accept credit card payments over the phone. In essence, West Interactive has an exclusive agreement with Eckoh to offer its CallGuard-branded solution to Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI-DSS).

PCI-DSS amount to detailed guidelines that reduce the risk of fraud by ensuring that card data (including customer names, card numbers, expiration dates and security codes) are not displayed on agent screens or stored in IT environments. It is a mandatory step that every company must take to carry out trusted conversations with customers or prospects. With the partner agreement, West simplifies implementation of PCI-DSS; however, it understands that this action is just the beginning. West is deploying Eckoh’s flexible solution in its own contact centers as well as serving as the exclusive reseller of Eckoh technology in the U.S.

The demand for CallGuard is simple to explain. I just received another email from my favorite home improvement store today telling me about their latest data breach. This got me thinking even more about some of the areas we focus on at Opus Research related to voice security and authentication, and security throughout the conversational commerce space.

Since joining Opus, I have quickly begun to understand the range of security challenges contact centers face. Many of those issues were extensively discussed at our recent event in San Francisco and will be discussed at the upcoming VBC London conference.

Agent fraud and the underground market for stolen credit cards is booming. A report from the security news site KrebsOnSecurity said that cards are being sold for anywhere from $20 to $300 on black market sites. And in this segment of CBS News “60 Minutes” reporter Steve Croft exposes how personal information is being stolen at doctors’ and dentists’ offices as part of a $60 billion tax refund scam.

Like my home improvement store, companies are looking to prevent fraud, protect their brand, avoid financial penalties and reinforce customer trust. To achieve these goals, companies must, at a minimum, comply with PCI-DSS, as the West/Eckoh partnership makes possible. The use of voiceprints and/or multifactor identification processes to detect fraudsters or authenticate genuine customers is also part of the mix.

The Eckoh/West CallGuard product can be deployed on premises or hosted in the cloud, and enables contact center agents to take card payments from callers without seeing or accessing credit card data. CallGuard removes sensitive numeric data, including cardholder data from contact center recordings, agents, networks and processes.

Contact center security is paramount for companies when considering the end-to-end customer experience journey. And a key security concern on the “last mile” is that of agent fraud. West and Eckoh get it, and their deeper relationship is a very positive development.

Categories: Conversational Intelligence, Intelligent Authentication, Articles

Tags: West Interactive, Fraud, PCI DSS, Data security, Eckoh, Credit cards