Call filtering is more than a nice-to-have for any business looking to maintain control over its communication channels. It’s not just about reducing annoyances; ineffective call filtering can expose your business to phishing attacks, operational downtime, and data breaches. Enterprises that fail to implement robust call filtering are at serious risk of compromised security and reduced productivity. This guide explores call filtering techniques, the challenges businesses face, and how to deploy solutions that protect communications at scale.
What is Call Filtering
Call filtering screens incoming calls based on various data points, automatically blocking unwanted or harmful communications. This prevents spam, robocall scams, and fraud from disrupting your operations. It also protects your employees from interacting with malicious actors. Modern and effective filtering technology leverages a combination of real-time threat intelligence, machine learning, and authentication protocols to make accurate decisions about whether to allow or block a call.
Common Techniques Used in Call Filtering
Blacklist and Whitelist
Blacklists block known malicious numbers, while whitelists ensure that trusted contacts always get through. This is a baseline approach, but it has its limitations. The dynamic nature of modern threats means that blacklists can become outdated quickly, and legitimate calls may sometimes be mistakenly blocked. This method should be supplemented with more adaptive systems that go beyond static lists.
Caller ID Authentication
STIR/SHAKEN (Secure Telephone Identity Revisited/Signature-based Handling of Asserted Information Using toKENs) is a critical protocol for combating caller ID spoofing. By digitally signing and verifying the origin of a call, it prevents attackers from using fake caller IDs to trick recipients. However, STIR/SHAKEN is not foolproof:
Coverage Limitations: STIR/SHAKEN is only effective within networks that have adopted the protocol. If a call crosses from a compliant network to a non-compliant one (such as international networks or certain VoIP services), the protection is lost.
Spoofing Beyond Caller ID: STIR/SHAKEN primarily addresses caller ID spoofing, but it doesn’t protect against other types of attacks, like phishing or social engineering. This means that while it offers a strong foundation, it should be part of a broader solution.
International Gaps: Since STIR/SHAKEN is largely a U.S.-focused initiative, international calls often bypass its protections, making global enterprises particularly vulnerable unless additional safeguards are implemented.
Machine Learning Algorithms
Machine learning (ML) is increasingly becoming the backbone of sophisticated call filtering systems. ML algorithms analyze behavioral patterns in real time, flagging anomalies that indicate potential fraud or spam. For example, a sudden spike in short-duration calls from unfamiliar regions could be a sign of a robocall campaign. ML systems have the unique advantage of learning and adapting over time, allowing them to detect previously unseen threats. The key challenge with ML is ensuring the algorithm has access to high-quality data and a continuous feedback loop for refinement.
Real-time Threat Intelligence
Integrates external data feeds from global databases of known spam, fraud, and malicious activity. This provides immediate insights into emerging threats and enhances the accuracy of call filtering. For enterprises, leveraging threat intelligence is critical for adapting to the latest tactics used by attackers, especially as fraud schemes evolve rapidly. However, businesses must ensure their systems are not over-reliant on external data and that they integrate internal data points for more comprehensive coverage.
Benefits of Call Filtering
Implementing call filtering technology offers numerous benefits for businesses, enhancing both call security and operational efficiency.
Enhanced Security
Effective call filtering does more than block nuisance calls—it is a key layer of defense against phishing, fraud, and data breaches. Each unwanted call that reaches your employees is a potential entry point for attackers. By filtering calls at the network level, enterprises can protect sensitive data and prevent employees from engaging with malicious actors. STIR/SHAKEN, combined with other authentication protocols, minimizes caller ID spoofing, but enterprises must also incorporate advanced filtering for international calls and non-compliant networks.
Increased Productivity
Unwanted calls are a direct hit to productivity. Employees distracted by robocalls or fraud attempts lose time and focus. This problem compounds when you consider the scale of large enterprises that handle hundreds or thousands of calls daily. Call filtering not only eliminates these distractions but also ensures that your team spends their time on legitimate, value-driving activities.
Improved Customer Experience
Enterprises with clogged communication lines due to spam and fraud risk damaging their reputation. Long hold times, dropped calls, and frustrated customers are the results of poor call management. Call filtering clears your lines of unwanted calls, allowing legitimate customer inquiries to flow smoothly. This translates directly into higher satisfaction, retention, and loyalty.
Cost Savings
Every spam call that reaches your business not only wastes employee time but also consumes IT and infrastructure resources. Beyond the immediate costs, there are longer-term risks associated with data breaches, lost customer trust, and compliance failures. Investing in call filtering is cost-effective, especially when integrated with real-time threat intelligence and machine learning to ensure minimal operational overhead.
Industry-Specific Applications of Call Filtering
Healthcare
In the healthcare industry, call filtering ensures that critical communication lines remain open for patient care and emergency services. By blocking spam and fraudulent calls, healthcare providers can focus on patient inquiries, appointment scheduling, and telehealth services without interruptions. This improves the efficiency of healthcare delivery and enhances patient satisfaction.
Finance
Banks and financial institutions are frequent targets of sophisticated phishing attacks and call fraud. Call filtering is a critical part of any financial institution’s fraud prevention strategy, reducing the risk of customer data theft and compliance breaches. Fraudulent calls attempting to impersonate bank representatives or trick customers into revealing sensitive information can be blocked before they reach client-facing teams, significantly reducing fraud incidents.
Retail
For retail businesses, call filtering ensures that customer service lines remain free from robocalls and spam, allowing your representatives to focus on customer satisfaction. During peak seasons, when call volumes are high, the efficiency provided by call filtering can reduce operational strain and prevent revenue loss due to overwhelmed support lines.
Best Practices for Implementing Call Filtering
Regularly Update Blacklists and Whitelists
Keeping blacklists and whitelists up to date is critical for maintaining filtering accuracy. Threat intelligence feeds should be integrated into your system to automatically update these lists, but manual oversight is also necessary to ensure legitimate calls are not mistakenly blocked.
Continuous Training for Employees
Training your employees to recognize suspicious calls and handle flagged communications correctly is essential. Even the best technology can’t completely eliminate risk if human error introduces new vulnerabilities. Regular, up-to-date training will ensure that your team knows how to respond appropriately to any threats flagged by the system.
Monitor and Review Call Filtering Performance
Call filtering systems should be continuously monitored and fine-tuned to ensure optimal performance. Enterprises should track call metrics like false positive rates, the percentage of calls flagged as spam, and the number of legitimate calls successfully filtered. Regular audits and system updates help ensure your filtering strategy stays effective in the face of evolving threats.
Integrate with Other Security Measures
Effective call filtering is not a standalone solution. It needs to be integrated into your overall security strategy, working alongside firewalls, intrusion detection systems (IDS), and data encryption to provide a full-spectrum defense. This holistic approach helps protect against threats from multiple channels, ensuring your business is safeguarded across all fronts.
SecureLogix: Advanced Call Filtering and Voice Security Solutions
SecureLogix provides comprehensive solutions to protect enterprise communication channels from the constant threat of spam, robocalls, and fraud. As the only vendor offering a unified approach to voice security, SecureLogix helps enterprises secure their voice networks with advanced call filtering, authentication, and reputation management systems. Our solutions are built to protect against everything from Telephony Denial of Service (TDoS) attacks to call spoofing and fraud, ensuring your business communication remains uninterrupted and secure.
Call Defense™ System
The Call Defense™ System is a fully integrated call filtering solution that sits at the edge of your enterprise voice network. It acts as a voice firewall, blocking malicious calls in real time and reducing the risk of fraud and business disruption. This system is designed to filter out unwanted call traffic, ensuring that only legitimate calls reach your employees and customer service agents.
Key Benefits
Comprehensive Call Filtering: Filters out robocalls, spam, and fraudulent calls at the network edge, protecting your business from voice channel attacks.
Real-Time Malicious Call Prevention: Detects and blocks TDoS attacks, vishing scams, and other fraudulent activities before they disrupt your operations.
Unified Policy Enforcement: Provides enterprise-wide call visibility and enforces consistent security policies across your entire voice network.
TrueCall™ Spoofing Protection Service
Outbound call spoofing is a growing concern for enterprises, as fraudsters use legitimate business phone numbers to deceive customers. The TrueCall™ Spoofing Protection Service integrates with carrier networks and their call analytics platforms to identify and block spoofed calls that attempt to use your corporate numbers. This service ensures that only legitimate business calls pass through, protecting your brand’s reputation and increasing call answer rates.
Key Benefits
Prevent Fraud: Blocks spoofed calls at the carrier level, protecting your phone numbers from being misused by attackers.
Maintain Caller ID Reputation: Ensures that your outbound calls are not marked as spam or fraud, leading to higher answer rates and increased customer trust.
Broad Network Coverage: Works across all major wireless carriers, covering 95% of wireless subscribers to ensure extensive protection.
Reputation Defense™ Call Number Management Service
The Reputation Defense™ Call Number Management Service helps enterprises maintain the health of their phone numbers by managing and restoring caller ID reputations. This service works to clean and prevent fraud or spam labels from being attached to your business phone numbers, ensuring that your outbound calls are trusted by customers.
Key Benefits
Continuous Reputation Monitoring: Monitors and restores the reputation of your calling numbers to prevent them from being flagged as spam.
Increase Call Answer Rates: A healthy phone number reputation leads to higher call answer rates and improved communication with customers.
Low-Friction Implementation: Rapid onboarding and registration of all relevant phone numbers across different service providers, ensuring minimal disruption to your operations.
Orchestra One™ Call Authentication Service
For inbound call security, Orchestra One™ offers a cloud-based call verification and spoofing detection service. This service automates the verification process, providing customer service agents with real-time authentication scores for incoming calls. It reduces fraud, enhances customer trust, and improves operational efficiency by automating the process of identifying legitimate callers.
Key Benefits
Inbound Call Authentication: Automatically verifies trusted callers, reducing the risk of inbound call spoofing and fraud.
Increased Agent Productivity: Reduces the time agents spend on manually verifying calls, freeing them to handle more inquiries efficiently.
Cost Efficiency: Lowers operational costs through automated verification, reducing the need for expensive per-call authentication solutions.
FAQ
Q: What is call filtering? Call filtering is the process of screening incoming calls to identify and block unwanted or harmful calls, such as spam, robocalls, and fraudulent calls.
Q: What are the most common mistakes enterprises make when implementing call filtering? Common mistakes include relying solely on blacklists or whitelists, which can become outdated quickly, and not integrating call filtering with broader security measures. Another misstep is underestimating the importance of regular system reviews—enterprises should continuously monitor and adjust their filtering systems based on performance data, new threats, and evolving business needs. Employee training is also often neglected, leading to human error that undermines even the most sophisticated filtering technology.
Q: What are common techniques used in call filtering? Common techniques include blacklist and whitelist management, caller ID authentication (such as STIR/SHAKEN), machine learning algorithms, and real-time threat intelligence integration.
Q: How does STIR/SHAKEN protect against caller ID spoofing, and where does it fall short? STIR/SHAKEN is a protocol that digitally signs calls to verify their origin, preventing attackers from spoofing caller IDs. However, it has limitations:
It only works within compliant networks. Calls crossing into non-compliant or international networks may lose this protection.
It focuses on caller ID spoofing but doesn’t address other fraud techniques, such as social engineering. To fully secure your communications, STIR/SHAKEN should be part of a broader call security strategy, supplemented with other authentication and filtering technologies.
Q: Can machine learning really improve call filtering accuracy? Machine learning (ML) enhances the accuracy of call filtering by analyzing call behaviors and identifying patterns associated with fraud and spam. ML algorithms adapt in real-time, learning from new data to recognize emerging threats. Unlike static blacklists, ML evolves with changing attack tactics, offering a dynamic defense that improves over time. However, its effectiveness depends on the quality of data inputs and regular training of the algorithm.
Q: What are the benefits of using SecureLogix’s Contact™ Call Branding Service? The service offers increased call answer rates, broad coverage across wireless devices, and full call branding display capabilities, enhancing both security and customer trust.