Fraud targeting enterprise communications has never been more sophisticated or more costly. In 2024, the Federal Trade Commission reported consumers losing more than $12.5B in fraud losses, up 25% from the previous year. Phone calls were the second most commonly reported contact method for fraud in 2024, followed by text messages.[1] A growing share of that fraud runs directly through consumer communications: bad actors infiltrating contact centers, impersonating outbound numbers, and exploiting any gap in a business’s voice communications stack.
At Bandwidth, combating this isn’t a seasonal effort that ramps up only on demand. It’s a core part of what we do and it’s become more comprehensive than ever. Here’s how we’re protecting our customers and their end-users today.
STIR/SHAKEN authentication
Advanced technological solutions like STIR/SHAKEN play an important role in verifying the origin of a call across carrier networks. Bandwidth implemented STIR/SHAKEN in our network in December 2019 and has been a key proponent and participant in shaping the STIR/SHAKEN ecosystem. We’ve supported the signing of billions of calls. And Bandwidth delivers STIR/SHAKEN information on significantly more inbound calls than other carriers (86%, according to a Pindrop study).[2]
Our contact center security and trust services: A comprehensive, cloud-based defense
Bandwidth offers a full set of security and trust solutions for contact centers—a unified, cloud-based set of solutions that addresses both inbound and outbound fraud risks from a single provider.
Enterprises have historically had to stitch together multiple vendors to cover the full spectrum of contact center fraud: one provider for call authentication, another for spam label remediation, yet another for call branding. That fragmentation creates tech debt, delays, and blind spots. Our Trust Services Suite consolidates those needs at the carrier layer, built on Bandwidth’s owned-and-operated, 5x toll-free carrier- redundant network.
Protecting the inbound: Keeping fraudsters out of your contact center
Bad actors increasingly target enterprise contact centers directly, attempting to impersonate legitimate customers and extract sensitive information. The burden of detection often falls on individual agents, making them vulnerable to social engineering.
Our inbound trust solutions help close that gap:
Call Verification authenticates inbound callers before they ever reach an agent, helping contact centers distinguish legitimate customers from fraudsters and reduce the friction placed on real customers. Learn more →
Pindrop Integration brings voice bioauthentication and AI deepfake detection directly into the Bandwidth platform. Pindrop’s technology analyzes calls for risk signals, giving contact centers deeper intelligence to act on. The integration at the carrier level strengthens your inbound defense without adding another vendor relationship to manage. Learn more →
Protecting the outbound: Restoring customer trust in your calls
The other side of the fraud problem is just as damaging. Carriers and consumer apps have become increasingly strict about flagging numbers as ‘spam’ or ‘scam likely”’ and legitimate businesses often get caught in the crossfire. According to a Numeracle report, 85% of respondents said they rarely or never trust caller ID for an unrecognized number, and 66% won’t answer a call even when caller ID is present. That’s a massive hit to call answer rates, customer engagement, and ultimately revenue. The financial fallout is real— 33% of workers say their company has lost money because they couldn’t reach customers by phone as per Hiya.
Additionally, when companies try to remedy this with branded calling, sophisticated spoofers try to hijack branded displays too.
Bandwidth’s outbound trust solutions directly address these layers of call trust issues:
Number Reputation Management (NRM) enables you to monitor your outbound numbers for improper spam and scam labels across carrier networks and consumer apps in one place. It also triggers remediation of those labels directly with the carriers, before a mislabeled number becomes a pattern that erodes your brand.
Identity Presentation (Coming soon) enables branded calling experiences through a trusted third-party provider, so customers see a recognizable name and logo when you call. It allows you to build consumer confidence that the call is legitimate as they appear on the mobile devices.
Identity Authentication API (Beta) verifies the origin of your outbound calls at the carrier level before the calls reach the carrier analytics engines, ensuring only authenticated calls display your business’s information.
Together, these outbound solutions help enterprises reduce spoofing, increase call answer rates, and restore the customer trust that fraud has eroded.
Proactive network monitoring and anomaly detection
We’ve always maintained 24×7/365 monitoring in the US through our Network Operations Center (NOC) and Fraud Mitigation Team, watching for unusual traffic patterns that could signal fraudulent activity. When fraud is detected, we engage in traceback efforts and work directly with co-carriers, industry organizations, and law enforcement to find and stop the source.
Now it’s possible to add an AI-powered layer on top of that foundation: Anomaly Detection for Voice (ADV) uses a proprietary machine learning model trained on your historical voice traffic patterns. Using these, it identifies anomalies in your voice traffic that could indicate fraud in progress. When something unusual is detected, alerts are delivered via email or webhook, putting actionable intelligence directly in your hands so you can respond before issues escalate.
Messaging spam filters
Every message delivered to our network continues to pass through our filtering system before further delivery. This helps protect consumers from spam and fraudulent traffic while ensuring our customers’ legitimate messages reach their intended recipients, improving deliverability and protecting their brand reputation.
Educating partners and customers
Technology alone doesn’t stop fraud. We actively work with our partners and customers to ensure they’re adopting fraud prevention best practices and equipping their end-users with the knowledge to recognize and avoid scams. Informed customers are a critical line of defense against fraud, and they’re also less likely to inadvertently block legitimate traffic when they understand what to look for.
Industry leadership
Bandwidth remains an active member of the key industry organizations working to tackle communications fraud at scale: ATIS, CTIA, SipForum, Incompas, CFCA, and M3AAWG, among others. These memberships give us a front-row seat to emerging threats and ensure we’re contributing to and benefiting from the industry’s collective response.
Fraud isn’t a problem you solve once. It evolves, and so do we. If you want to learn more about how Bandwidth’s trust services can help secure your contact center and restore trust in your communications, reach out to our team.
Learn about acceptable uses of our network: bandwidth.com/legal/acceptable-use-policy
[1] FTC, Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book 2024
[2] Linkedin, Report card for STIR SHAKEN implementation by Carriers and CCaaS providers
