From account creation to every interaction thereafter, authentication plays a crucial role in safeguarding user data and maintaining trust. It verifies users' identities, safeguards sensitive information, and, of course, prevents unauthorized access and costly fraud.
Here’s how to integrate seamless authentication into every customer touchpoint to prioritize both user security and user experience.
Onboarding is one of the first experiences a user has with your business as a new user, so you’ll want to put your business’ best foot forward. This means striking a balance between security and user experience — a challenge that is easier said than done, especially considering onboarding typically has the largest churn rate of any stage in the customer journey. Making the authentication process overly burdensome, such as requiring users to upload identification documents or find better lighting for a photo, can exacerbate journey abandonment.
At the same time, making verification too easy can allow bad actors and fraudulent accounts to sneak in, compromising the security of your systems and potentially costing you big down the line. To mitigate this, businesses can implement seamless identity verification methods that establish trust and security from the outset of the customer journey. For example, Silent Network Authentication (SNA) allows organizations to discreetly verify that an individual possesses a phone number without requiring user input. Because SNA happens in the background and is immune to social engineering, it’s a highly secure, yet user friendly verification solution. This ensures legitimate new users can seamlessly activate their accounts, enhancing both security and user satisfaction from the outset of their journey.
“Secure onboarding and account security is an important focus for us and our customers. We use Twilio to verify phone numbers and to make sure that the right account or right supplier is behind the right phone number...Twilio was a great decision for us.”
— Andrew Solomon, Sr. Software Engineer, Choco
Building secure login processes can protect your customers against account takeovers and prevent SIM swapped numbers from access accounts — all without interrupting login flows. With Twilio Lookup, your business can connect with carrier APIs to lookup identity signals — like SIM data and carrier infrastructure — to signal whether to continue with authentication or add more blockers. Twilio Verify can instantly decide if a valid SIM number, device, and user name are being used in any login, allowing legitimate users to access their account seamlessly.
If a user’s identity signals do seem suspicious, your business can quickly identify fake or fraudulent users so you can swoop in to apply extra step-up security as needed. For example, you might ask a suspicious individual to verify their identity again using a face scan or fingerprint before they can access their payment information, change their password, or view sensitive information. This can help mitigate account takeover and keep your legitimate users’ personal information safe.
Transactions are a common target for fraudsters. It’s up to your business to ensure that the real user is the one initiating these transactions and not a bad actor. Using Verify and Lookup, your organization can prove users are who they say they are or trigger step-up authentication if activity is deemed suspicious for an added layer of fraud protection. This can help your business maintain secure transactions.
Looking to protect your business and customers against account takeovers? Your business can use Twilio to validate password resets, device changes, user reactivation, and other account changes to keep fraudsters from stealing user accounts. This ensures bad actors can’t reroute packages, make purchases, access user banking information, and more.
