The Benefits of Secure SMS for Telecommunications Providers

SMS fraud has increased with the technology usage and as with other technologies there is a solution; secure SMS. This telecom SMS enables companies to improve their security and thus the perceived quality by the customer and user experience. Telecom SMS enables companies to provide call to action marketing and secure correspondence directly to the customer reducing the time for the customers response and enable chat-bot and AI chat-bots to be used to validate a user in a marketing event before getting a real sales member contacting the client. 

Secure SMS for telecommunications providers reduces the risk of SMS fraud which is necessary to keep clients and customer facing integrity of the company intact. As you can imagine having a telecommunications company’s service being compromised would not impart confidence in a company that specializes in telecommunications.

Some Common types of SMS fraud

There are many ways to compromise a company and its telecom SMS however 7 key ones to watch out for with regards to telecom SMS. One of the first is spam being sent to a client with the user believing it is from a valid telecom SMS service.

Existing SMS networks are not protected from any type of data collection with Man-in-the-middle (MIM) attacks possible on potential individuals. This is a common practice for newspapers who use it for high-profile targets. This process can be quickly applied to many individuals without them knowing with some news groups collecting information for years. Secure SMS for telecommunications providers can mitigate this through data encryption and two-way validation keys being used to confirm receipt of the data. 

Secure SMS for telecommunications providers can also mitigate the process used to block the usage of a secure network, again allowing interception of data. Additionally, when sending a telecom SMS there are two possible ways of getting the message from the sender to the receiver, one that is legal SMS and the other illegal SMS through a process called gray routing. This process can allow companies to send cheaper SMS messages through a telecom SMS provider that may route a message through a cheaper country that either doesn’t not enforce or have SMS laws. While this sounds like a good idea to keep the telecom SMS being competitive in the market place, there is little in terms of control of data sent and SMSs for key target numbers may be monitored to help to gain financial or political advantages by criminals and governments. Additionally, data can be sold in black markets to help scammers craft caller scripts of scam SMS messages for key targets. 

As this process is not technically illegal and as of 2020 accounts for 19% of all messages sent it begs the question about how secure many user’s data really is. This could be detrimental for banking and financial sectors or where sensitive data is being handled, such as the health sector.

Thankfully secure SMS for telecommunications providers use only known routes that are not part of this gray sector. While this increases the cost of the system it helps ensure that the company is not part of a scandal arounds data leakage or customer exploitation. 

Summary

While it sounds like a good idea to cut costs through using a non-secure SMS provider it can cost you your business in the long term as data could be used by criminals, governments and news media; leaving you exposed to law suits and confidence in the business detrimentally impacted. Secure SMS for telecommunications providers helps provide a solution that doesn’t lead to compromise, from the encryption of data packets to having dependable sending paths.