Posted: 2 Min ReadExpert Perspectives

Gaining 8-Figure Efficiency From Cyber Security

A Secret Unveiled for the CISO

Many of the largest companies in the world run call centers to service their customers – think any airline, financial services firm, wireless carrier. These operations are extremely expensive. For large multinational corps such as AT&T, American Express, and Delta, the call center operating expense (“opex”) could exceed $1B.  

We’ve all likely had good and bad experiences when calling into or chatting with one of these providers. There are two things that have likely frustrated you the most:

  1. “I’m on hold too long!” (no matter how great the music or advertising is)
  2. “After all these years, they still don’t know me.” (They ask for the same information repeatedly)

There’s a way for a cyber security solution to deliver both on it’s primary objective and reduce millions in cost.

… if the solution reduced the time on hold and identity validation by ~90 secs, then that company would save more than 10 million annually (and improve the privacy of their customer).

Take the following scenario.

Sally Smith calls into her wireless carrier to inquire about her bill. She gets the usual voice recording, press 1 for this and 2 for that. Then she is asked to validate her identity likely asking for her birthdate, address or with a passcode (that she likely can’t remember). She waits a minute or two, gets a live agent and then the agent proceeds to validate her identity. The identity validation process can take 30 secs or more. When a company like a wireless carrier is processing 15 million + calls per month, seconds count. If the call is in a public area, customers can be uncomfortable providing such information.

The good news, there is an alternative.

A New Way to Apply Proven Technology

Multi-factor authentication is a way to use a customer’s mobile phone to validate their identity. There are thousands of companies using it, but I have seen few utilize it or market it to improve three (3) important things for them and their customer:  

  1. Reduce the amount of time a customer remains on hold
  2. Leverage digital methods to validate identity
  3. Protect the customer’s privacy

The call center experience below, in my view, would set the standard for a secure, protected customer experience.

This works through leveraging the company’s existing app such as myATT or Amex Mobile. The tech simply gets embedded into their app and that unleashes all the identity validation and security magic in the background.

To the customer, when they called, it would look something like this:

For the company employing it, based on their call volume, if it reduced the time on hold and identity validation by ~90 secs, then that company could cut $10+ million out of their operating expenses. It also would improve their own identity as a secure provider of their own services, thereby driving positive net promoter scores (eg brand). Best of all, it does not require a large budget item bc/ the CISO should be able to negotiate a pay for performance model with their security provider with little up-front costs.

There are many other vertical use cases for cyber security that are left untapped that are soft on the security budget and better justified by other metrics that are critical to a corporation’s health. To learn more, contact Symantec and see how this use case applies to your organization.


Cyber Security Platform Shift

Cyber threats continue to evolve and target enterprise weaknesses, while the cost and complexity of operating cyber security are increasing. And the old way of fighting cyber-attacks using fragmented tools no longer works. How do organisations adapt their cyber security technology strategies?

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About the Author

Chris Greco

VP, Global Business Development Symantec

Chris works with the best people in Cyber Defense, supporting the largest telecom service providers in the world.