Are You Prepared for STIR/SHAKEN?

Written by

Brian Simpson, Customer Solutions Engineer

Contributed by

Diane Smith, President & CEO
Aaron Smith, Sr. Consultant & VP Operations

Published October 28, 2021

The era of SPAM annoyance may be coming to an end! Soon, our telephony call setup traffic will have to be verified between Telecom Carriers.  The focus will be to eliminate irritating spoof calls, therefore reducing the number of time-wasting calls on our devices. This intrinsically raises the value of authentic voice communications as a pathway for critical and valid communications, both personally and professionally.

In the same way we use certificates and signatures to verify data packets, a similar approach will be used for validating voice calls. All calls generated from an end user will have a signature attached to it. The receiving Telecom Carrier will use a signature repository to validate that the call is genuine and will be allowed to pass onto its destination.  If a Telecom Carrier receives a call that cannot be validated, then the Telecom Carrier (much like Gandalf) will “not allow them to pass.” There is no end user intervention, as Telecom Carriers are the entities assigning and verifying the signatures.

You may want to consider validating if your current Telecom Carrier is participating in the new STIR|SHAKen methodology. The major Telecom Carriers are participating and have started to implement this new methodology in order to comply with this FCC regulation.  It is important that the Telecom Carriers you use are participating in this new protocol (STIR/SHAKEN), as calls not assigned with TOKENs could be potentially ignored by Telecom Carriers who are receiving your un-authenticated call.  Telecom Carriers who do not implement STIR/SHAKEN, will not have these TOKENs therefore people calling your business may be marked as SPAM or the call may not reach your business at all.  Missing calls for many businesses translate to lost business – therefore, the impact to your business is great. Ensuring that your Telecom Carriers are implementing STIR/SHAKEN should be near the top of your list.