SHAKEN/STIR explained

What is SHAKEN/STIR?

Increased fraudulent calls and spam calls has resulted in lack of trust in voice calls. For a couple of years the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) has been working on finding an actionable solution.

In December 2019, Congress passed the Traced Act which among other things, requires voice service providers to implement authentication technologies to verify the identity of the organization who originated the call.

SHAKEN/STIR is a technology framework developed by the industry, the acronyms stand for Signature-based Handling of Asserted Information Using toKENs (SHAKEN) and Secure Telephone Identity Revisited (STIR). Implementing SHAKEN/STIR standards is one of the ways the FCC and Congress hope will help mitigate fraudulent robocalls reach consumers.

The FCC set June 30th, 2021 as the deadline to implement SHAKEN/STIR. Failing to provide the required information to identify your organization or the organization you are placing calls on behalf of may result in calls getting blocked, traceback requests, subpoena, among others.

What do echo19 users need to do differently?

This is a legal requirement and all automated calls are required to have the originating Brand registered through our system. Beginning June 30th, the system won’t let you schedule automated calls if there isn't a registered Brand associated with the program.

For this, echo19 has deployed a Brand Registration form that will need to be filled out with accurate and verifiable information that identifies the organization making the calls.

Remember, Brand is the organization who the call receiver thinks is talking to. If you are a consultant who works with multiple clients, you need to start gathering this information from your clients and register their Brands in the system by June 30th, 2021. Again, after this date, you won’t be able to run automated calls through echo19 without a registered Brand.

Since the information required by SHAKEN/STIR is similar to the information that will be required to register a Brand for texting (10DLC), we have developed a standardized Brand registration process that works for both communication channels (automated calls and SMS). This means your Brand(s) will only need to be registered once in echo19.

Visit our Brand Registration article for instructions on how to register Brands in echo19. This process requires internal review, please allow us 24h to get approval.