Top 8 Call Center Security Trends and Predictions for 2021

Everything is going digital and the recent COVID-led remote working and eCommerce boom has further added to the online dependence of people for everything. Contact center, being at the forefront of customer relationship management, find themselves assuming greater responsibility in this scenario of hyper-digitization and everything eCommerce. The increasing criticality of call center also comes with increased cybersecurity risks for them, making them easy targets for cyber attackers.

How will the call center and virtual call center evolve in 2021 and beyond? What are the top call center' security trends that the organizations need to look out for to ensure the security and safety of their data, information, people, customers, and businesses?

As cybersecurity becomes one of the top concerns for organizations across the globe, let us discuss it in detail and share insights about the top 8 call center predictions for 2021 along with the increasing role of AI call center support to enhance cybersecurity for contact center.

8 Call Center Security Trends and Predictions to Look Out For

The concept of Artificial Intelligence and call center together can completely change the customer service game, enabling hyper-personalization of customer experiences driven by deep data analysis.

To understand how do call center benefit from Artificial Intelligence, it is critical to understand the various ways and use cases of AI in the contact center. Let us share with you the top 16 ways in which AI can truly enrich CX for call center.

1. With Increased Opportunities and Risk of Identity Theft, Stronger Authentication Methods Will be Adopted

   

   With everything and everyone going mobile, the authentication of the customers' identity becomes one of the biggest worries for call center. To ensure that the call center are benefitting genuine customers rather than cybercriminals, they will need to find better and more robust channels to authenticate the identities of their customers.

   Biometric-based authentication that involves voice and face recognition are optimal solutions for the phone channels of call center. Multi-factor authorization to access critical information in sectors like banking and healthcare will be of greater importance in today's age of the virtual world.

   Linking personal social media profiles of customers for authentication and authorization can also help in significantly minimizing the risk of fraudulent practices and cyberattacks.

2. A Strong Password Policy for Data Security Will Become Essential

   

   Did you know 28% of data breaches result from weak passwords? Shocking, right?

   People in general, whether they are customers or even call center agents do not take the passwords too seriously, resulting in a greater chance of data breach. Cyber attackers can easily crack weak passwords and can mess with the accounts of call center agents and customers. Hence, call center will need to enforce a strong password policy within the organization and educate their customers about the importance of using better passwords.

3. Ransomware Attacks Will Be On the Rise!

   

   The absence of better firewall security measures in the 2020 work-from-home scenario has led the ransomware to re-emerge stronger and more frequent than ever before. This is certainly bad news and with many organizations looking to continue remote working, it might only get worse.

   This means that the organizations will need to adhere to better data protection practices to stop ransomware attacks that have the potential to cause serious data breaches and other damages. Having backups is one of the best ways to deal with ransomware attacks, but they will need better call center data security tools in place to aid in the prevention of such attacks rather than mitigating the effects of the same.

4. Fraud Training Amongst Employees Will Become Critical as Phishing and Spear-Phishing Cases Gain Momentum

   

   Again the unprotected and vulnerable environments of call center at the moment have led to an increased number of phishing and spear-phishing cases. Fraud social engineering by attackers has made the call center agents become soft targets to commit frauds and unauthorized transactions. Deployment of smart systems and proper employee training to read through the phishing and spear-phishing attempts have become imperative to maintain the sanctity and the reputation of the call center.

   Some of the most effective tips while undertaking fraud training of employees to identify phishing attempts include building a list of recent examples showcasing the various types of phishing emails that fraudsters send. The fraudsters tend to align their malicious emails with the current happenings around the world, making them seem real. Through such examples, the call center can educate agents to look for and quickly identify the red flags that may come as generalized greetings, a lot of grammar mistakes, dire warning requiring agents to urgently process requests, poor quality logos in the footer, etc.

5. Regulatory Compliance Will Be Amongst the Topmost Contact Center Security Trends

   

   Regulatory compliance is one of the major security trends for call center and all other organizations in general. Online privacy and security have become a primary concern for the customers, governments, and businesses alike, making government-led cybersecurity measures and statutory guidelines highly important to comply with to assert proper handling of customer and other sensitive data along with making virtual spaces more secure and safe for everyone to operate in.

6. Overcoming Organizational Silos With the Adoption of Secure Cloud Solutions

   

   The departmental and the data silos within the day-to-day functioning of a contact center may ruin the customer experience. As customer experience becomes one of the top factors affecting brand value and loyalty, such silos need to go away. Integrating AI technologies and adoption of Cloud for better and more optimized contextual support is no longer a novelty but a necessity to overcome such silos and serve customers better.

   Providing the customers the advantage of a secure cloud call center is indeed the future of call center and the contact center who are not yet utilizing the power of the cloud are putting a lot at stake and should consider migrating to cloud systems without any further delay.

7. Increased Focus on Secured Third-party Integrations and Improved Business Continuity

   

   Once the call center adopt cloud, they also integrate with APIs, at some point or the other, for various data entry and other reasons. While they may prove productive and reduce operational costs, third-party integrations also bring with them an increased risk of privacy and security compromises. This mostly happens due to weak security systems or unprotected third-party applications. To avert such data and security breaches, the companies must undertake third-party security audits from time-to-time and only integrate with reputed and reliable applications.

   The other part of day-to-day operations is timely app updates to regulate security trends about the level of redundancy and uptime because redundant software, greater downtime, or software failure may lead to data loss or breaches by exposing the data to the attackers leading to serious consequences for the call center.

8. Organizations to Prepare and Plan Better for IoT Vulnerabilities

   

   Internet of Things is being widely adopted across organizations to make various mundane operations simpler and easier. However, the new age technologies come with their own set of vulnerabilities and security is the number one factor to consider when embracing new technologies. Attackers and hackers can use IoT systems for denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, leading to malicious practices, physical theft, and other potential dangers to the call center.

   The call center need to place hardware-backed, multi-security credentials, and authentication systems to ensure authorized access to systems, data, and other things. Using secured IoT gateways and edge devices is highly recommended for insecure devices and the internet to attain an optimal level of IoT security.

Ensure Optimum Security of your Call Center with Outsource2india

The future of call center truly relies on the level of security and privacy that the call center can provide to their team and customers. Our extensive list of call center security trends and predictions lays strong emphasis on the need for robust security and privacy systems for call center and why it will become a key factor in improved customer experiences and enhancing customer loyalty. The importance of cybersecurity and predictions around it needs to be considered more seriously than ever in 2021 and beyond.

Outsource2india, which is a reputed and committed service provider of call center solutions tailored to perfectly fit all call center standards, can help build reliable and industry-best security tools and systems for call center of any size, scale, and complexity.

Contact us to know how we ensure call center security and get a custom quote for your needs.