Fraudsters are Exploiting Your Agents - Here’s How to Fight Back

Contact centers are high-risk attack fraud locations that enterprises can no longer afford to overlook. While the $190 billion cybersecurity industry is focused on technical/syntactic threats, yet semantic threats, such as online scams, are ranked the second most common fraud vector in the U.S.

More often than not, call center agents unknowingly verify fraudsters, authorize scams, and innocently assist the caller in data breaches. Not because they’re negligent but because they’re human (a vulnerability no encryption protocol can fully mitigate).

While the KPIs of most customer experience or customer service leaders are measured by speed and customer satisfaction delivered by their teams, fraudsters exploit these KPIs against you:

• The faster your agents resolve issues, the easier they are to manipulate.
• The more they de-escalate complaints, the more susceptible they become to urgency-based deception.
• The more frictionless your customer payment flows are, the harder it is to catch bad social engineering tactics before it’s too late.

If you add too many security layers, your CX suffers—agents slow down, operational costs increase, and customers get frustrated. If we loosen security for speed? Fraud increases, financial losses mount, and compliance risks escalate.

So, how do large enterprises secure their contact centers without compromising service quality?

Let’s find out.

How modern fraudsters exploit contact centers at scale

Scam networks run like corporations. It’s harder now because you aren’t against lone cybercriminals but industrialized crime engines.

Some ways in which they carry out their activities include:

• Masking device identity: Fraudsters spoof caller IDs and locations, making their calls appear legitimate, evading basic location-based security checks and gaining trust from call center agents.
• Account preprocessing: Fraudsters cultivate legitimate-seeming accounts by observing and mimicking real user behavior over time, bypassing traditional fraud detection systems.
• Testing credentials for viability: Fraudsters rapidly test brute-force stolen data using AI and bots to identify exploitable accounts and catalog successful logins for future targeted attacks on contact centers.
• Creating synthetic identities: By combining real and fabricated data, criminals create fake identities that easily pass basic verification checks and often slip under the radar for a long time.
• Impersonating with AI voices: AI-driven voice manipulation allows fraudsters to convincingly mimic legitimate customers, even evading voice authentication systems with deepfake technology.

• SIM swap fraud: Fraudsters trick telecom providers into transferring a victim’s phone number to a new SIM card, allowing them to control sensitive accounts linked to the victim's phone number.

• Manipulating agent empathy: Armed with detailed personal information, fraudsters exploit agents' desire to help, bypassing authentication protocols by creating urgent or sympathetic scenarios.

Why traditional contact center security measures fall short

The problem is traditional contact center security measures are fundamentally reactive and hardly preventive. 

This is shown in measures like knowledge-based verification (KBV), which was once seen as a reliable security method but is now ineffective because personal data is readily available through dark web marketplaces. Fraudsters can simply buy the answers to commonly asked questions.

OTPs (One-Time Passwords) and SMS-based authentication are no longer the silver bullet for securing accounts. Fraudsters have found ways to intercept or bypass SMS codes using SIM swap fraud to reroute messages to their own devices.

Even the "pause/resume" call recording method in contact centers, which was once seen as a straightforward solution to avoid capturing sensitive payment card data—especially with automated pause functions to reduce human error—is now deemed non-compliant.

Starting March 31st, PCI DSS v4.0 will no longer recognize the pause and resume method as a valid strategy for safeguarding cardholder data.

However, modern solutions like Sycurio.Voice eliminates the need for pause-and-resume systems. 

Customers can directly input their payment details via their phone keypad or use speech recognition, sending the information straight to the payment provider. This way, sensitive payment data never passes through the contact center's infrastructure.

Best practices to prevent call center fraud

• Alter outgoing IVR messages: Randomly changing IVR messages disrupts scammers’ predictable call scripts, making it harder for them to automate fraud attempts. This unpredictability forces fraudsters to struggle to adapt to message flows.
• Inject noise into calls: Adding noise or degrading audio quality during calls prevents scammers from capturing clear audio samples needed for voice cloning or deepfake attacks.
• Regular software updates: Regularly updating all systems helps close security gaps and patch vulnerabilities that fraudsters might exploit. 
• Secure third-party integrations: Any third-party services integrated with your contact center should be evaluated for security vulnerabilities to prevent fraudsters from exploiting these connections.
• Interactive training resources: Providing intensive, hands-on training on contact center fraud and prevention of data leaks for ALL employees in ALL departments directly/indirectly in contact with customers. Organize sessions to educate employees on the latest payment security trends and updates. 

A modern approach to tackle call center fraud with Sycurio

Sycurio transforms how contact centers handle payments, turning compliance and security into seamless, effortless processes.

It offers solutions like Sycurio.Voice that allows customers to enter payment details directly via their phone keypad or through speech recognition, bypassing contact center systems and reducing the risk of data breaches.

Sycurio.Voice simplifies PCI DSS compliance for contact centers by securely handling payment transactions across multiple channels. It uses:

• Dual Tone Multi-Frequency (DTMF) masking to protect card data from being exposed to agents during calls
• Secure live voice capture and IVR speech recognition option for customers who prefer not to share their payment details via keypad
• Redactive tools to remove card data from call recordings

Sycurio serves industries like healthcare, finance, retail, and government, enabling them to transition smoothly into a digital-first world while safeguarding every customer interaction.

How Sycurio helps intercept fraud

Cross-channeling fraud detection for comprehensive security

CCaaS payments ensure secure transactions within the contact center, creating a centralized fraud prevention system. 

Its ability to provide secure payment solutions across voice, chat, and other digital platforms provides a unified fraud prevention system, ensuring that fraudsters can’t exploit gaps between customer touchpoints.

Sycurio’s chatbot at the payment gateway

Removing human risk with DTMF masking

Sycurio’s DTMF masking technology ensures agents never see or hear payment card details, removing the risk of agent fraud. With no exposure to sensitive payment data, the contact center is shielded from internal mistakes by agents and external threat actors and keeps up with PCI DSS regulations.

Sycurio simplifies PCI DSS compliance by isolating payment data and reducing scope across contact center infrastructure

Solving the “pause-and-resume” conundrum 

Sycurio removes the need for pause-and-resume by enabling secure payment methods where customers enter sensitive payment details directly through their phone keypad, speech recognition, or secure payment links without an agent being exposed to sensitive information.

Streamlining audits and reduction of compliance costs

As a QSA Company, Sycurio allows organizations to bypass certain external security assessments for PCI compliance. This reduces the time and cost of audits, freeing up resources for fraud prevention and improving operational efficiency without the disruption of lengthy compliance processes.

Conclusion

Every contact call center attack requires some level of engagement (interaction) between the fraudster and the victim.

The Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability (CIA) triad, the foundation of most security frameworks, excels at authenticating access but fails to detect intent, allowing scam callers to operate unchecked within PCI-compliant systems. 

Worse, traditional security reacts to known fraud patterns, leaving enterprises vulnerable to adaptive social engineering tactics that evolve faster than rule-based defences.

This puts customer payment data at risk, and layers of security are added, creating more friction between security and customer experience.

It’s clear: Securing the contact center requires taking control of the interaction from the start. 

FAQ

What is contact center fraud?

Contact center fraud involves manipulating call center systems and agents, using tactics such as identity theft to gain unauthorized access to sensitive information.

What are the three types of contact center fraud? 

• Phishing and vishing: Fraudsters impersonate trusted entities via phone or email to extract sensitive information.
• IVR hacking: Attackers manipulate Interactive Voice Response systems to gain unauthorized access to systems or data.
• Caller ID Spoofing: Scammers disguise their numbers to appear as legitimate callers.
  
  

How can call center fraud be prevented?

Implementing solutions like secure payment systems that prevent sensitive information from entering the engagement/interaction phase. Other important prevention measures include training employees and setting up voice biometrics to authenticate caller IDs.

How can I manage a fraud call?

Remain calm, follow security protocols, and refrain from sharing personal information or granting any access, however critical. Re-verify the caller's identity using additional authentication methods and escalate to a fraud team if necessary to block further access.