MWC USA Playbook Volume 1: The F-Word’s Role in the Enterprise Future

Mobile World Congress, taking place in Las Vegas on October 8-10, is all about the mobile technologies essential to preserving and empowering the future of the enterprise. It’s no surprise, then, that one of the key themes for the 2024 event is enterprise transformation , which is — as the description notes — inevitable.??

Yet, when we think about the future of the enterprise and the forces propelling innovation forward, we’d be remiss if we didn’t also consider the opposing forces. Yes, we’re talking about fraud. A wide variety of schemes and bad actors are at work across an equally varied mobile business landscape, and as mobile channels move further up the list of favored enterprise (and customer) tools, building the future of the enterprise requires as much defense as it does offense.?

Expanding Visibility, Reducing Fraud

What we’re thinking about in the lead up to Mobile World Congress is the idea of bringing mobile communications — and the mission-critical phone number intelligence data that supports it — into the light.?

Fraudsters and sophisticated fraud schemes are tricky to combat, but they need a cover of darkness to truly thrive. After all, exploiting a loophole or a weakness in the armor is a lot easier if the person doesn’t even know the gap exists in the first place. Across a complex, rich global mobile ecosystem, the number of endpoints, phone numbers, messages, phone calls and information sets have exploded. More organizations are seeking to create better, more personalized experiences for customers (and customers seek to leverage mobile services more than ever).?

Think of how many times a day you use your phone to interact with a business or a business contacts you using mobile. From mobile banking apps and services (thousands of traditional bank branches closed in 2023 while nearly 80% of surveyed consumers say digital banking services create better accessibility) to two-factor authentication solutions, e-commerce and food delivery services, healthcare apps and new customer service capabilities, everything is going online.?

We entrust our passwords, our financial information, our health data and much, much more to the digital realm — but are enterprises, financial institutions, healthcare providers and other businesses doing enough to protect that trust??

From our perspective as mobile ecosystem experts, we see so much of fraud as being rooted in a lack of awareness. Business mobile ecosystems are storing and leveraging large amounts of data, creating complex ecosystems, routing countless messages, and there is often a lack of proper due diligence to make sure that numbers are trustworthy, communications are safe and ecosystems have tight borders to prevent fraud and hacking. It’s also important to note that these challenges run rampant across the entire mobile landscape — even carriers, mobile network operators and more often need to reinvest in their fraud prevention measures to ensure fraudulent activity can’t trickle down to enterprises.?

Shining a light on proper ecosystem management, vetting and ongoing intelligence is the key to creating holistic changes and building better trust, security and reliability for an increasingly mobile enterprise future. To do that, we need to bring fraudsters — and the untrustworthy phone numbers they use — out into the open with the power of data.

The Power of Data and Collaboration

Yes, the well-worn phrase about knowledge being power actually is true — but for a long time, the thing holding the mobile landscape back was knowing where to find that fraud-fighting knowledge.?

So, netnumber (in addition to building industry-leading phone number intelligence data services and Number Intelligence as a Service (NIaaS) solutions) created the Fraud Prevention Registry (FPR). This is a go-to registry that collects and distributes information on phone numbers associated with communications fraud, removing fraudsters’ cover of darkness. The data is comprehensive and updated continuously, delivering insights that can help enterprises, brands, financial institutions, carriers and more generate better awareness of their ecosystem and more effectively fight fraud. These insights are delivered either through direct query service or through a seamless API with our netnumber Services Registry (nnSR?) .

Here’s an example of an enterprise or brand use case: The Fraud Prevention Registry identifies phone numbers leaked in data breaches and those of victims of phishing attacks. With this information, brands can add additional safety workflows for affected users by:

• Resetting their password
• Inviting them to use two-factor authentication
• Introducing more friction in sensitive processes like password reset or high-value transactions

Extrapolation to the entire ecosystem helps shut down bad actors quickly on a wide scale — and to keep pace with evolving fraud, this FPR continues to expand its scope of knowledge for enterprises. Partnership models are available that encourage close collaboration across the mobile landscape. Here, fraud findings can be safely and securely contributed by carriers, CPaaS providers and financial institutions to help offer enterprises even more accurate and expansive knowledge of the numbers in their ecosystems.?

So, when it comes to protecting and empowering the future of the enterprise, this is the type of collaboration and problem solving that will be on our minds at this year’s Mobile World Congress.?

Here’s some even better news — if you’ll be in Las Vegas for MWC, we also welcome you to check out our CEO and President, Steve Legge, as he dives deep into the state of fraud and offers comprehensive insights into the FPR at a fireside chat during MEF Connects on October 8 in Vegas .?

Fighting fraud takes a village, so we look forward to talking more about the innovation to come at the intersection of data and collaboration.?

To book a meeting with our team in Vegas, click here .?