SHAKEN/STIR: The Canada Edition

What is SHAKEN/STIR?

The SHAKEN/STIR directive has been introduced across the United States and Canada to address and prevent fraudulent robocalling.

Robocalling, a method for delivering automated voice messages through computerized phone calls, can be useful for communicating critical information to a broad audience quickly. However, it has increasingly become a favorite tool amongst fraudsters and scammers for swindling people out of personal information or tricking them into taking harmful actions, especially as robotic voice recordings continue to sound more and more human.

Fortunately, industry experts have developed a new framework to combat the rise in fraudulent robocalls and illegal phone number spoofing- SHAKEN/STIR.

When was SHAKEN/STIR implemented in Canada?

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) required telecommunications service providers (TSPs) to have implemented SHAKEN/STIR by November 30th, 2021. This follows its implementation across the United States as mandated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in June of the same year.

What do you need to do to comply with SHAKEN/STIR?

While the general public stands to benefit from the roll-out of SHAKEN/STIR, implementation of the framework itself is only applicable to Canadian carriers and international telephone service providers (TSPs) who provide voice communications services in Canada. TSPs were required to submit a readiness report to the CRTC by August 31, 2021. Going forward, carriers will need to submit a SHAKEN/STIR readiness report to the CRTC every six months.

The current policies to actively participate in Canadian SHAKEN/STIR are more strict than in those in the United States — originally only service providers able to receive numbering resources from the Canadian numbering administrator (CLECs I and II) were able to attest to calls.

On August 5, 2021, the CRTC directed the Canadian Secure Token Governance Authority (CST-GA) to update its token access policy to allow resellers to receive tokens and participate in the Canadian authentication framework. The CST-GA has since updated it’s policy as of November 19, 2021 and Telnyx has been successful in the process of applying for our own tokens. We are now approved as a Canadian SHAKEN/STIR participant that can appropriately attest to your traffic.

As a Telnyx customer, what does this mean for you?

The SHAKEN/STIR framework authenticates callers, thereby preventing number spoofing and fraudulent robocalls. In practice, this means calls will now have attestations — additional caller identification tokens exchanged between service providers.

As Telnyx is approved as a Canadian SHAKEN/STIR participant, Telnyx will authenticate every outbound call with a valid Canada Caller ID, and pass the identity header along for inbound calls that have been signed by the originating provider. Customers will not have to take any action to comply with SHAKEN/STIR.*

We’re excited to continue improving the quality of programmatic voice calling through these new measures, and look forward to supporting our customers and partners in becoming fully SHAKEN/STIR compliant.

If you have further questions about SHAKEN/STIR and what it means for your business, check out our support article, or reach out to a member of our team.

*Telnyx will sign and attest to any outbound call that is not signed by our customer. Customers, however, should be aware of any applicable regulatory requirements to directly participate in the SHAKEN/STIR ecosystem and to sign their own calls as mandated by the Federal Communications Commission. Telnyx will pass SHAKEN signatures along that we receive in any outbound calls.