What is security in the context of Call Centre Security?

Security is the measure most people expect a security process to be judged on, and one of three, with usability and efficiency. It covers both the protection the process really gives and the confidence customers feel in it.

How it is measured

The main measure is the false accept rate: how often an imposter gets through. An imposter who is turned away, as they should be, is a true reject.

Security is much harder to measure than usability. A genuine customer who is wrongly refused tells you straight away. An imposter who is wrongly let in does not, and you may find out months later or never. Many imposters are not after money on that call at all: they want to learn or confirm details to use later, through another channel or against another organisation.

Reading the numbers

• A false accept rate counts imposters, not calls. It is the share of imposter attempts that succeed, so it says nothing on its own about how many of your calls are fraudulent. That depends on the attack rate: how many of your callers are imposters in the first place.
• Imposters are rare, and they adapt. Most calls are genuine, so the few attacks are hard to find, and the people making them will look for the weakest route through your process, often the fallback for customers who fail the main method.
• Feeling safe matters too. Customers judge security by what they see. A process that feels thorough reassures them even when it is weak, and one they do not notice can worry them even when it is strong, so how you explain it is part of its security.

For ways to improve it, read Improving the security of your call centre security experience, and to see where a call centre sits in a fraud, see the fraud lifecycle in Market Perspectives. Chapter 4 of Unlock Your Call Centre covers security in depth.