STIR/SHAKEN Overview

I’m trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty. Not really, but isn't that one of the most frustrating things to hear when you answer your phone? What’s worse is when the company that made the phone call spoofed a local number to trick you into answering your phone.

Spoofing is when someone with nefarious intentions falsifies the information sent to your caller ID. Most of the time, the numbers spoofed have local area codes, which make people think the call is “safe” to answer.  These calls either come through by scammers or take place as robocalls. Sadly, spoofing is a major issue in the United States.

The answer to combating this issue is STIR/SHAKEN. Before STIR/SHAKEN, scammers, spammers, and robocallers could and would spoof any number in the user's area code. This included residential and business phone numbers. As a business, answering these calls would cut the business day short with unnecessary interruptions. As a business owner whose number was spoofed, damage to your reputation could be even more dangerous.

What is STIR/SHAKEN?

The FCC, or the Federal Communications Commission, has created a set of regulations and standards in order to combat robocallers and scammers. The name of these rules is STIR/SHAKEN. STIR/SHAKEN is an acronym for Secure Telephone Identity Revisited and Signature-based Handling of Asserted information using toKENS.

The following is the FC’s definition of what STIR/SHAKEN actually means.

“This means that calls traveling through interconnected phone networks would have their caller ID “signed” as legitimate by originating carriers and validated by other carriers before reaching consumers. STIR/SHAKEN digitally validates the handoff of phone calls passing through the complex web of networks, allowing the phone company of the consumer receiving the call to verify that a call is in fact from the number displayed on Caller ID.”

This is great news for business owners. While taking the extra steps to make sure that your business phone number has a signature seems like a hassle, in the end, your business phone number and reputation will become more trustworthy.

How does STIR/SHAKEN affect you?

As of June 30, 2021, STIR/SHAKEN was due to go into effect. Thankfully, the major carriers all adopted this technology quickly. However, smaller providers were not as fast to transition as their larger counterparts.

Due to this slow adoption, robocalls and spoofing are still a major issue in the United States. The number of spoofed phone calls was as high as 4.9 billion calls per month, and after implementation, that number dropped. However, it only dropped to 4.1 billion calls per month, so spoofing is still a major problem.

As a business owner, you will need to make sure that you are abiding by all the regulatory requirements set forth by not only the federal but also local government agencies. Luckily for you, if you have a great communications solutions provider, they will make sure that it is all taken care of through your platform. You and your business will be covered just by using their communications solution.

STIR/SHAKEN Compliance with Tierzero

Tierzero has your business’ success in mind. We know that your business, your customers, and your livelihood depend on a great deal of hard work. We want you to be able to focus on supporting your customers and leave the FCC stuff to us.

We are there for our customers with communications solutions that incorporate network modifications with STIR/SHAKEN compliance. With security and flexibility in mind, we offer you the most up-to-date and current communications solutions on the market.

Contact Tierzero today to make sure that your communication solution is up to date and STIR/SHAKEN compliant.

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