Pindrop’s Fraud Protection Solution Review: Measure Caller Risk

Pindrop Security was born out of a concept for fraud protection by Georgia Institute of Technology Alumni. Founder Vijay Balasubramaniyan theorised that calls could be acoustically fingerprinted to gather data and link it to phone number specific risk. This idea led to the founding of Pindrop in 2011, and the company has steadily gathered momentum since then.  

Most recently, Pindrop Security received USD 75 million in funding from Google Capital. So, what makes Pindrop’s anti-fraud solution so unique? Well, Pindrop is powered by a proprietary Phoneprinting technology that analyses over 1300 factors of a call’s full audio to determine its originating device, geo-location, and carrier.  

Pindrop started with anti-fraud solutions in the contact centre space and has started venturing into IoT and automotive over the last few years.  

Today, we are turning the spotlight on the company’s Fraud Protection Solution for contact centres in a detailed review.  

Inside Pindrop’s Fraud Protection Solution  

The platform includes two distinct modules to make sure that all calls processed by your contact centres are genuine and secure: 

1. Pindrop Protect for anti-fraud – Pindrop Protect assigns a risk score based on the caller’s voice, device, and behaviour and shares this with the contact centres fraud analysis team. This happens in real-time, as every anomaly is rapidly detected and flagged to garner feedback. The solution also includes machine learning capabilities, so that its fraud detection competencies get better with time. 

Pindrop Protect comes with a built-in case management tool which flags calls based on a customisable risk threshold. Once a fraudulent call is detected, you can perform a rigorous root cause analysis and discover any fraudster in your system.  

2. Pindrop Passport for Authentication – Passport gives you deeper visibility into authentication performance, letting you identify and prioritise legitimate callers. Passport automatically tells you which call is genuine, cutting down the time and effort needed for question-based manual authentication.  

Passport can be deployed on the Cloud and generates call credentials in real-time.  You can also leverage its open API library to build integration with your IVR and CRM systems.  

Let us now review the behind-the-scenes technology that makes Pindrop such a formidable solution in anti-fraud.  

• Phoneprinting – As mentioned, Phoneprinting helps the tool analyse 1300+ audio features to create distinct telephony profiles. Some of the features analysed include call spectrum, loss, and noise. There’s also a Toneprinting capability through which the caller’s device is used as an identification mechanism.  

The impacts of Phoneprinting are infinite – you can narrow down multiple callers with the same print, tracking and protecting against fraudulent caller groups. And, your agents can directly engage with legitimate callers without going into a complex, authentication flowchart.  

• Deep Voice Biometric Engine – This is a neural network speaker recognition system that monitors a call right from the IVR stage to final closure by a human agent. You can identify repeat callers and provide your customers with a seamless experience.  

But the biggest plus of Deep Voice is its ability to cut down background noise and prevent fraudsters from masking their voice. Contact centres can leverage this technology to create dynamic whitelists and blacklists, streamlining customer interactions.  

• Behavioural analysis – Pindrop also applies behavioural analytics to study calling patterns. You will be alerted to any instance of an automated bot dialling in, instead of a human customer.  You can also assess individual caller reputations, based on interaction frequency and type.  

Further, the insights gathered from caller behaviour can be fed into the risk score assignment engine, making it more accurate.  

Why Pindrop’s Fraud Protection Solution makes a Difference  

Pindrop is backed by some of the most unique tech-innovations in contact centre management out there today. The company claims that it protects over 650 million calls every year, catering to the world’s largest contact centres.  

For organisations dealing with a sizeable customer base, and regularly handling queries, fraud is a very real risk. Pindrop has found that 53% of fraudulent calls are made on a VoIP connection – clearly device-based authentication can go a long way in mitigating contact centre fraud. Not only will this help you save precious time in manual authentication protocols, but you can also stay confident in the security of your customer’s data and account details.  

What We Think  

Pindrop works on a very simple premise: a significant proportion of inbound calls at a contact centre are fraudulent, and this compromises efficiency as well as customer data security. Its solutions offer an easy answer to this challenge, without requiring a dedicated cybersecurity or data analytics module.  

The inbound call itself becomes a marker of authentication, informing decision-making and risk management. That’s why think that Pindrop has immense potential for mid-to-large-sized contact centres looking to clamp down on security.