Industry-wide vetting and authentication standards establish secure foundation for branded calling
RESTON, Va. - December 13, 2022 - First Orion and Hiya join Neustar, Inc., a TransUnion company, and Transaction Network Services (TNS) to form a strategic partnership advancing the industry’s call vetting and authentication standards with a single framework across the largest carriers in North America. This partnership helps enable secure, trusted calls to more than 285 million mobile devices and the 90 million households that rely on landline phone service.
By validating legitimate enterprises and authenticating calls through an integrated network, First Orion, Hiya, Neustar and TNS protect subscribers from phone scams, support enterprise-to-consumer communication and restore trusted calls to the telecom ecosystem. The partnership reduces industry fragmentation with a common process for enterprises to brand calls on all major carriers. Components include:
● Vetting and Registration: Leveraging a proven approach, First Orion, Hiya, Neustar and TNS established best practices to validate the legitimacy of enterprises, and confirm they have the right to use associated telephone numbers and enterprise calling party data so they can more rapidly vet and register telephone numbers.
● Authentication: Through a standards-based approach, this partnership provides new, seamless functionality to enterprises and contact centers so they can participate in the call authentication process. Using Out-of-Band SHAKEN, for instance, automates the end-to-end process of digitally validating calls.
Enterprises use branded calling to add their brand name, logo, call reason and more to the mobile display for outbound calls. This capability delivers a transparent customer experience and can help dramatically improve contact rates and customer engagement, while increasing revenues for enterprises. Through this partnership, each company monitors the delivery of branded calling services across the various networks, to prevent scams and protect consumers against bad actors who may attempt to misuse the service.
“The partnership’s extensive experience working with some of the largest enterprises in the U.S. allowed us to recognize the benefit of a standardized approach to vetting," said Joe Stinziano, president and COO at First Orion. "Collectively, we support restoring trust in voice calling and helping organizations dramatically improve call engagement rates – while guarding against misuse by unauthorized parties.”
“Many service providers don’t have the ability to confidently vet their customers, or confirm the caller’s true identity at scale,” said Kush Parikh, president at Hiya. “Branded calls allow subscribers to make informed decisions about which calls to answer – and as result grow trust in the voice network. This partnership will add great value to communication service providers, enterprises, and consumers as the phone remains the preferred communications channel.”
“Vetting includes validating the legitimacy of the business, and confirming they have the right to use certain phone numbers and associated caller data. But it doesn’t end there. It’s a multi-dimensional process that spans the lifecycle of service delivery,” said James Garvert, senior vice president of Communications Solutions at Neustar. “It also impacts the entire ecosystem by paving the way for branded calling with rich content that can be verified and trusted.”
“Without a serious commitment to join forces in vetting customers and verifying legitimate traffic, bad actors will continue to destroy trust in the phone ecosystem,” said Bill Versen, president of the Communications Marketfor TNS. “This partnership now operates the largest single platform for delivering trusted calls to the market, with unmatched scale, authority, and intelligence. It’s an exciting time in the industry and we encourage other companies to join us in adopting this approach to help restore trust in the voice network.”
For more information, please visit the respective websites of First Orion, Hiya, Neustar and TNS.
About First Orion
Since 2008, First Orion has transformed the phone call experience for businesses, carriers and consumers through its industry-leading communication branding and protection solutions. The global telecommunications solutions provider helps businesses generate more revenue, increase efficiency, and improve the customer experience by empowering them to brand their phone calls with their name, logo and reason for calling. First Orion also provides the industry’s most secure calling experience and best-in-class analytics for call program optimization. For more information, visit firstorion .com .
About Hiya
Hiya is trusted by global businesses, carriers, and consumers to provide secure, engaging connections and stop unwanted calls. Built on the world’s leading Voice Security Platform, Hiya connects businesses with their customers, helps carriers secure their networks, and protects people from spam and fraud calls. Hiya’s SaaS applications, Hiya Connect and Hiya Protect, serve more than 250 million users on the Hiya Network, powering call protection and identity for AT&T, EE, Samsung, Ericsson and more. Learn more at www.hiya.com.
About Neustar
Neustar, Inc., a TransUnion company, is a leader in identity resolution providing the data and technology that enable trusted connections between companies and people at the moments that matter most. Neustar offers industry-leading solutions in marketing, risk and communications that responsibly connect data on people, devices and locations, continuously corroborated through billions of transactions. Learn how your company can benefit from the power of trusted connections. www.home.neustar.
About TNS
From small rural operators in the US to the largest multi-national carriers, TNS addresses the full needs of wireless and wireline operators in the US and globally. TNS Call Guardian® is an industry-leading call analytics solution used by leading US wireless service providers as well as US landline providers to protect its subscribers from high risk and nuisance robocalls and deliver a superior user experience. By analyzing over 1 billion call events across more than 500 operators every single day and capturing crowdsourced feedback, the Call Guardian app enables carriers to identify
more unwanted robocalls than competitors. For additional information visit https://tnsi.com/resource-center/communications/.
About TransUnion (NYSE: TRU)
TransUnion is a global information and insights company that makes trust possible in the modern economy. We do this by providing an actionable picture of each person so they can be reliably represented in the marketplace. As a result, businesses and consumers can transact with confidence and achieve great things. We call this Information for Good®. A leading presence in more than 30 countries across five continents, TransUnion provides solutions that help create economic opportunity, great experiences, and personal empowerment for hundreds of millions of people. www.transunion.com
December 13, 2022
First Orion
Daniel Tummeley
501-358-4061
media@firstorion.com
Hiya
Elise Harrington
425-835-3673
elise.harrington@hiya.com
FINN
Neustar Media Relations
Rob Bitter
914-471-5615
Neustar@finnpartners.com
TNS Media Relations
Brian Lustig
202-836-9112
tns@bluetext.com
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