3 Must-Have Best Practices for Securing the Mobile Enterprise Environment

In a mobile, digital and highly communicative world, organizations are now tasked with being the stewards of their own mobile ecosystems. Containing masses of phone numbers and customer contact information, these mobile ecosystems are the bedrock of modern user experiences, and depending on how they’re managed, they can either create delight — or disaster. 

Today, customers’ phone numbers or emails are central business and brand touchpoints, and communicating conveniently, closely and securely is paramount. Unfortunately, with the reality of countless communications endpoints and ever-changing levels of reachability and validity, this is easier said than done. 

If we think of the mobile ecosystem of a given brand or business like a fortress, securing mobile processes (keeping fraud at bay and preventing unnecessary costs or negative user experiences) means keeping watch over the perimeter and maintaining steady vigilance. However, even as fraud remains on the rise and users become more discerning, some enterprises aren’t investing in their guards — some are even leaving the gate open. 

For enterprises, understanding best practices in the new mobile world is crucial to avoiding common (and preventable) pitfalls. Here are the three top considerations every enterprise should know when constructing their best-ever mobile security protocols. 

1. Getting it Right from the Get-Go 

End-to-end, holistic protection against fraud and costly communications missteps is the best way to keep business interruptions at a minimum and security at its peak. So, it’s natural to start with the very first step in the user interface: registration. When a phone number or email first comes into the enterprise ecosystem, this is the first (and most strategic) opportunity to start off on a secure path. 

Vetting and validation of any communications endpoint that enters the business sphere is one of the most effective ways to maintain protection against the unknown. In fact, it’s the bare minimum. Still, some enterprises don’t make this part of their fraud prevention and routing reliability protocols. In this case, vetting a phone number means doing your due diligence on all the data a given phone number has to offer. This background check should include inspecting behavioral patterns and number standardization and hygiene — data that tells the story of the user, revealing any red flags in the process. In doing so, enterprises establish if the number is valid, reachable and connected from the very beginning. This process averts unnecessary costs and security challenges associated with sending communications to invalid or fraudulent numbers, saving time, resources — and peace of mind. As such, it’s a cornerstone of mobile best practices. 

2. You Can’t ‘Set and Forget’ Trust 

Admittedly, if solving fraud completely was easy, everyone would do it. The true reality of our mobile, connected world is that fraud is a constant — a sickness that can be managed with the right tools and insights but never fully cured. This is because mobile ecosystems (and the communications strategies and users therein) are constantly evolving. After all, phone numbers are just as dynamic as the people who use them. This makes vetting and validation perpetual processes instead of one-and-done checks. 

Today, many enterprises are failing to keep that constant watch over their ecosystem, which means the integrity of the data and the business operations built on top of it deteriorate over time. Ongoing, meaningful contact defines today’s most desirable customer experiences — so why don’t enterprises offer the same care to their lists, databases and mobile ecosystems? Over the lifetime of a customer relationship, two-factor authentication processes, brand communications, password resets and beyond present convenience for the user and business, but these conveniences double as fraud vectors. Phone numbers can become invalid, unreachable or even fraudulent at any time, which means the next contact you make with a customer can be the one that fails. As a result, continued checks are necessary for a thriving, secure mobile strategy. 

It’s important to note that the right tools are needed to generate proper ongoing care. To stay on pace with industry best practices, fast, real-time validation is needed on a global scale — and not every tool makes that easy. That brings us to our last consideration. 

3. For Clear Results, Get Clear Data 

Understanding the value of vetting at the beginning and creating ongoing validation processes is one thing, but we know that knowing is only one half of the equation — doing is the other. This is where a lot of enterprises find their challenges arise. Many teams know they need to create more advanced processes, but it can be tricky to navigate the many tools out there to help. 

If we distill new expectations for fraud prevention and routing reliability down into actionable building blocks, it becomes clear that data is at the heart of success. Getting the right insights into a given phone number’s level of trust and helping lifetime vetting processes move at the speed of your business (without creating friction for you or your customers) means having a comprehensive aggregation of all data points and an interface that gives quick results. Not many tools are able to offer this level of ease and clarity into a growing, evolving mobile ecosystem — but we know one that can. 

The netnumber Confidence Index (nnCI) is built to meet these mission-critical needs for speed, reliability and robust insight into the level of trust for any phone number across the globe in real time. Still, the best part is that it makes trust measurable and easy to manage, delivering a validity check on a simple scale of 0-5 based on a host of available data points. 

Creating next-generation fraud prevention and reliability isn’t an easy job — so enterprises need a tool that can make complex, comprehensive processes achievable. From registration to ongoing communications and beyond, the nnCI makes proper vetting and validation easy by making trust measurable. 

Interested in building more reliability and security? Don’t miss your chance to learn more about the nnCI from our dedicated press kit.