At the last edition of the Future Identity Festival we were delighted to chat to Jeff Steiner, Head of Strategic Relationships at TeleSign. Through developer-friendly APIs TeleSign delivers user verification, multifactor authentication, and omnichannel communications, to help brands prevent fraud, streamline omnichannel engagement and secure onboarding.

“When it comes to onboarding,” Jeff tells us, “it’s all about finding the right balance between fraud and friction. Not enough security and you open the door for bad actors to come in causing reputation or financial harm to your business, too much friction and good humans will drop out.”

Jeff highlights that multifactor authentication (MFA)is now no longer an option for businesses, it’s a necessity. “99.9% of account takeover attacks that had MFA enabled, failed,” he explains, “now it’s not a 100%, but it never will be as fraudsters find new attack vectors all the time.”

In this short interview, Jeff also explores the evolving threat of SIM Swap and discusses how businesses can use data to understand customer behaviour and flag suspicious activity.

The full video, exploring the future of onboarding, authentication and customer trust is available to watch now:

Save the dates for next year’s Future Identity Festival taking place on November 13th & 14th 2023, at The Brewery, London.

There’s only one week to go until Future Identity Finance, taking place March 29th 2023, at the Convene, London. Join 500+ attendees to explore how innovation, regulation and customer expectations are changing how we identify ourselves to access financial services.

And don’t miss the launch edition of Future Identity Customer, taking place on 16th May, in London, and bringing together identity innovators from consumer facing businesses in retail, gaming, mobility, entertainment, travel, healthcare and other key sectors.