 JSA Podcast Studio, presenting Data Movers, showcasing the leaders behind the headlines in the telecom and data center infrastructure industry. Welcome, welcome, welcome everybody to our podcast series, Data Movers. I am your host, Jamie Scott-O-Kutaya, founder and CEO of JSA, along with my, as you know, fabulous co-host. That's the top B2B social media influencer, Mr. Evan Kirstel. Hey Evan. Hey Jamie, and hey everyone and welcome to Data Movers, where as you know, we sit down with the most influential men and women leading today's telco and data center world. Jamie, we got a lot of news on the horizon. Plenty to Zeta about, have you created any exes today? I am exing out here with the new Twitter rebrand. But you know, I like Elon's reason for it, right? That they're going from just 140 character Twitter to a really robust communication platform. So it kind of makes sense. Ex unknown, the, you know, new frontier, I don't know. Am I? You took it too far. Well you're a marketing and branding guru, a specialist. What do you think about throwing away $10 billion and 15 years worth of branding efforts? Do you think that's generally a good idea or a bad one? Well, I think the market view is people are, you know, watching Elon just tear up the assets. He spent a lot of money for exing things out, if you will. So, you know, I will tell you, you know, I always just keep watching him. Like he always is full of surprises. And you know what? He takes big risks, but has big wins because of it. So I'm watching carefully with Elon. Well, that's all we can do in our position. And in any case, he's in the news cycle like every 48 hours though. All the time, just the media coverage he's gotten off of this is probably repaid at least a few billion. And speaking of media coverage, let's get on with our guests because we have a good one today. Let's definitely do it. I'm super excited too. As you know, here at Data Movers, we just love to get these amazing guests, dive into their background stories, guys, their careers, high as lows, really hear about their unique perspectives on the future of our industry. And today, woohoo, let's get started with our amazing guests. We have Catalan Bedea, VP of Product Management and Bradley Greer, Senior Director of Data Solutions and Partnerships, both at NetNumber Global Data Services. Welcome, guys. Thank you for having us. Hi, thank you. I'm excited to dive in. We are so thrilled that you are here at NetNumber doing so much, what an incredibly busy year you guys have been doing. The telecommunications industry also huge year for them, fighting communications fraud, like illegal robo-calling, something we all hate, of course. And of course, NetNumber, for those who don't know, a leader in the phone number intelligence data space. Can you tell us a little bit about why these services and data are important in combating robo-calling and other types of voice and messaging fraud? Maybe, Catalan, can we start with you? Yeah, you're right, Jamie. First turns seem to never be short of new ideas and tactics here. The good thing is that we can be one step ahead of them if we use the right tools. And you mentioned phone number intelligence. I'd like to spend maybe a minute here on explaining what it is and why it's important for those in the audience that might not be aware. So phone number intelligence is metadata associated with phone numbers. And examples would be the phone number type. Is it a mobile number? Is it a landline number? The carrier associated with a phone number or the routing information that enables messaging and voice traffic to flow through and reach the destination, the respective number. But also from a fraud prevention perspective, we help here customers avoid the account takeover fraud by flagging phone numbers that have been recently ported. That's an important way of defrauding victims. And we also enable the industry to mitigate other types of scams and the texts with the service that we call numeric check. The important thing to remember is that these data points and services that I mentioned, they help everyone anywhere in the world apply verification filters and block communication or flag communication that appears to be fraudulent. At the same time, they can optimize processes and save money. Well said. Wow, two birds with one stone. That's pretty intriguing. And this is really timely because we have Black Hat coming up, DEF CON and digital identity is really a fundamental issue in the world of infosec and security and stopping fraud. And Brad, I know you're quite the guru when it comes to all things, digital identity. You know, what's one of the latest tactics and examples of fraud that involve phone numbers either of a business side or even consumers. I would say the, you know, broadly speaking, the biggest thing that's happening is information mating. So fraudsters are using your device to confirm who you are and you're connected to a phone number in real time. I think that that changes the ecosystem and the game that we have to play to really keep end users and people safe during their communications. For example of that, sometimes you'll get a bogus text message from a phone number that you don't recognize telling you to click here because your service is suspended. You clicking that, you are now telling them that you are an active phone subscriber and by you clicking the link, they're now able to link your phone number to your location. There's a lot of different nuances like that as it's front and center in communications. It's just like fighting fraud, phone intelligence is front and center of all that because you have to start there. All of that information gathering. So I would say calling is still a big thing. You answering the phone for a scammer again validates that you're alive personally at the end of the line. You get some one step closer to your digital footprint. And so we could talk about robo calling, we talk about spamming and all of those different things but front and center, it's really information baiting that's really giving officers the fuel and the power to conduct all sorts of fraud. Yeah. And I think that's a really good lead-in to your recently unveiled, refresh solution called New Mary check. New Mary check of course, helping telecommunications providers meet these challenges. Can you cattle and give us a little bit more details on New Mary check? How does it work? Is it how companies really identify this fraudulent activity we're talking about? Sure. So New Mary check is all about real time or using a large number of underlying signal and we're helping our customer determine if a phone number is valid or invalid any number anywhere in the world. And what this enables, it helps brands enterprises, communication service providers to enhance their phone number verification processes. I think it would become more clear if we look at some concrete examples of how customers use it. So one such example would be a user account verification. So mobile apps or websites that have a new user registration flow or process, they typically collect the phone number of that new user as well. What New Mary check can do is that it can check if the phone number that's provided by the user is valid or invalid. And if the number is invalid, it doesn't mean automatically that there's something wrong with the respective sign up attempt, but it's also not fully legitimate sign up attempt either. So what our customers typically do is that they send this registration attempt via some other type of verification, some other type of flow, additional friction. It can be a capture or it can be some additional data which they collect to ensure that it's actually a real user behind that registration attempt and not just the bots trying to register a lot of fake accounts and then use that platform for spam. If we're switching to messaging and traffic routing in the wholesale space. So here it's a combination of fraud reduction and cost saving. So service providers acting in this industry they can save some of the cost of messaging and voice calls because if they see a message or a voice call on their platform that's supposed to be terminated to a phone number that's invalid, there is no point in terminating that particular transaction at all and it will not reach a human anyway. So they can just save that cost. But also in terms of identifying some of the typical fraud types that affect the messaging and the voice industry right now, things like CLI refiling in the context of origin and origin base rating. And there are also requirements in many countries today about do not originate numbers, they have to be screened and the respective calls or messages have to be blocked. And last but not least here, an example from the financial space. So a number check can be used as an additional signal in the overall risk assessment, risk scoring engine mechanism of a bank or a credit card company or some other financial institution. So by, they are typically looking at more signals but one of them can be, is the phone number that's provided as part of the transaction valid or invalid and any valid number can increase the risk of that transaction and in coordination with other signals that that financial institution might want again to block the transaction, call the customer, introduce some additional friction just to protect their account. So that's it in a nutshell, it's a really easy service to implement, it's API based and yeah, it helps customers basically improve any process that relies on phone numbers. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, government regulatory bodies around the world have highlighted this issue of fraud and communications and have taken action, including the SEC here at home and kind of new rules and best practices, all kinds of anti-fraud efforts. But Brad, where are we with that? Because we still have this plague upon us, this scourge of fraud, even given all these new regulations. So how do you see us navigating through this new landscape? So when you think about the world as it sits today, there's so much machine learning, there's so much AI. Fraudsters are always ahead of all of that, right? And we as service providers and as good patrons or regulates for the affairs, we're trying to think of innovative ways to really combat that. Well, the one thing that is most obvious is you've gotta have services that are designed for your total ecosystem. So your total ecosystem of phone numbers, right? When you think about that, every single phone number, if you have services in tact that are telling you more information about a phone number, when you do get the occasional fraud, you have some way to track it backwards and to really know how to prevent it through AI and modeling going forward. Well, that's what the number suite is really all about is we're developing innovative products that you can use throughout your whole entire total ecosystem. And we're designing them that way so that you can backtrack to the fraud to stop it from happening in the future. So I will say that a lot of people in the industry are doing unnecessary caching that leads to stale data. Our services are designed for real time to really help you mitigate when that fraud happens. So I will say that no matter what regulatory obligation you're facing, real-time data touching your total ecosystem is the only way you can combat fraud effectively. Net number, you're going to see us come out with innovative data offerings that help you combat that total ecosystem regardless of your industry. So again guys, if you're working on that as far as compliance, the only way to get on the same page of creating a safety ecosystem to offer great services is by querying everything you can about a phone number in real time and back to being when issues happen. The only way to save money, it's the only way to save everyone is your offering service. Really well said, really well said. And now gentlemen, we're transitioning to one of my favorite parts of the show where we get a little bit more personal. We learn a bit more about your careers but got you to where you are today. So Catalin, we'll start with you. Of course you joined Net Number as head of product management back in 2020 after of course serving a huge range of leadership roles at telecom messaging and cloud communications providers previously, what prompted you in your interest in telecom? It's always been telecom, why? Yeah, it's an interesting question. As many things in life, it happened partially by chance. I do have a technical background though I studied computer science but I was kind of preparing for a career in software development and engineering until one of my colleagues at the university told me about his great experience with the role he had at a local wireless carrier and based on his recommendation, I applied for a job there, I got the job and I started soon after in the customer care department. So that was my entry into telecom and I joined the product management team there or I stayed in product management until now. I just switched from that carrier to an A2P messaging provider and after that to Net Number. Amazing. Fantastic. And Brad also on your end, you joined Net Number in February but many years experience in banking and telecom across digital identity and privacy and cyber. So what prompted your interest in this space? Obsession of ineffective data and inefficient processes really. Coming from background of portfolio management, internet banking, information services, product development, there's always been one thing front and center. We've innovated and evolved technology faster than the data that we have to support it and with that comes strains. And so really that's what's always fascinated me about this industry and we're always fighting to catch up and we never catch up. And the more we learn about the data, the further the technology innovates. So I will say that that's what has kept me going over the last 17 years as there's just, you know, that stagnant pull in between technology emerging that makes their lives easier and the data that we have to support it and then not to mention the abuse, right? Of course, which is a big fraud and ID component of it. Well, speaking on behalf of the telecommunications industry, may I be the first to say, I'm so glad you guys chose our industry for your expertise because we certainly do need it. We certainly do need the obsession with fighting fraud. So let's see, a question for both of you guys. I'll start with Callan first and then Brad. Can you share some future predictions for the telecom industry in general, like areas of focus or new services you think are coming up? Yeah, what I see now is that everyone in our space talks about the artificial inflated traffic and messaging. It seems to be a very big problem. And there is until now no perfect complete solution to this issue. Some of our data can help to partially identify the phone numbers used for this type of fraud. So there are partial solutions out there, but until now there is no complete solution, as I mentioned. So yeah, that's definitely an area of focus and I expect to see an increased industry collaboration to complete it. I mean, it looks to be one of those that people have to come together as an industry and it has to do their part to get rid of this very, very damaging issue. Brad? Yeah, so to kind of piggyback off of Catalan, the big key word and the vision for the future that we're all fighting towards is uniformity. In each market and it's just like any other industry, right? When you're a global company, everyone's doing things a little differently. However, they're not talking about what they're doing to come up with it with an overall uniform process to really impact and disrupt all of the nuance within the industry. I think that as we continue to develop, we're going to be really, really sensitive to that, right? And closing that gap that detours us from uniformity. So I would say that what you can expect out of that number out of us in the future is we're going to continue to push and innovate towards that uniformity. Love it. Well, you want to do the honors, Mr. Evan and introduce our rapid fire section now. Yeah, so this is our rapid fire section where we ask you some questions, try to embarrass you. In public and basically to catch you off guard. Just kidding. So Catalan, we'll start with you. If you could have lunch with a famous person in history besides Jamie, who would it be and why? Good question. Albert Einstein and why? I think it seems to have been this mix of genius and crazy. And I would like to see how that works in practice. I love that. I love that. All right, Brad, I'm going to give you an easier one. That was tough. But you did it so eloquently, Catalan. So get out there. But Brad, what's the most used app on your phone? Oh my gosh, probably Apple Maps because I never know where I'm going. I don't know where you're going to. Other than Apple, to be in the space, you have to read. You have to know what's going on. You have, being a data person, you have a very busy mind. And you have to be able to rationalize what's going on in the world and make it relevant to really innovate and evolve. So I would say that LinkedIn and Apple Maps because I never know where I'm going. You never know where you're going because you're using Apple Maps. But otherwise, maybe Apple Maps might be better. Okay, what about favorite hobbies? You know, we're in the summer here. We're trying to relax and rest a bit. What's your favorite hobby or pastime, Brad? Got a G-Tab? Yeah, so I live in Southern California. So I love hiking. It's where I find my zen. When I don't need zen, I am an avid sneaker collection. Catalan can vouch for that. I'm finding the next rare designer hard to find sneaker. If you see me at an event, I will never disappoint on shoes. I'll tell you, in SoCal, people take their sneakers super seriously. I see lines eight in the morning at the door for a sneaker store that's opening up at noon. And I'm like, what is going on? Yes. Oh, so funny. All right, so Catalan, we have to hear from you. What's your favorite hobby, pastime, when you're able to break away? Yeah, I like to travel a lot. See the world, experience new places, new cultures. Yeah, well, that's a great one. Yeah. Well, it's really interesting. I mean, Catalan, what's your name? Where are you from originally, I guess, is my question. I'm born in Romania, and I'm living in Germany now since over 10 years. Oh, got it. Beautiful, but beautiful places, both of those. So yeah, nothing like traveling in Europe. But yeah, thanks so much for joining us, guys. Really appreciate your insights and analysis. I had no idea of the extent of your research and work in the area of identity with something as old as a phone number. We think phone number is 100 plus year old entity, and yet still so important today. So keep up the amazing work. Absolutely, absolutely. And guys, you want to know more about net number? Go ahead and scan here. Wait, I don't know. Here is that. Can you guys do that? Yeah, here we go. The whole mirror thing. Yeah, scan there and you'll get to netnumber.com. Definitely check that out, guys, especially if you want to help with the war against robocalling. Also, if you enjoyed today's Data Movers podcast, I'm sure you did. And you want to hear some more? Go ahead and check us out, jsa.net slash podcast for upcoming episodes. Fantastic. And be sure to follow us on Z or X or the place. We shall not name. I'm not sure. At Still J Scotto and at Evan Kirstel. We'll see you there. Absolutely, guys. Thank you. Thank you and happy networking. Thank you.