Safeguard your customers – and your brand

The days of logging in with nothing more than a username and password have come to an end. And most people appreciate that.

Extra steps to verify ownership of an account are obviously needed to protect sensitive financial and medical information. However, many consumers also want these protections for other online accounts and applications.

Even though it can be a hassle, our research found most consumers believe those extra steps either make them feel safer (49%) or are a necessary inconvenience (27%).

One of the fastest and most convenient ways to deliver multi-factor authentication (MFA) messages like one-time passwords (OTPs) is with a text message sent directly to the user’s smartphone. But texting isn’t the only effective verification method.

Organizations spend plenty of time and money educating their employees on the risks of phishing. Consumers don’t often get that education – and survey results reflect that.

When asked to choose the channel they thought would be least likely to be used for phishing attempts, nearly 35% selected email.

Unfortunately, email is actually the most popular threat vector among bad actors with approximately 3.4 billion phishing emails sent daily. No channel is 100% safe.

Around 27% of consumers chose in-app notifications, which are certainly safer. However, in-app messages are only available once you’re logged into an application.

Just 4% of respondents selected RCS. But they may not realize the truth. This emerging form of messaging has significant safety benefits thanks to visual indicators that come only from verified senders.

While nearly everyone uses SPF and DKIM, major mailbox providers recently introduced a requirement that all bulk senders use DMARC as well. That’s because it is the best way to keep others from using your domain to send email.

Sinch Mailgun’s State of email deliverability 2025 report found an 11% increase in DMARC adoption. However, 18% of those surveyed still aren’t using DMARC, and another 28% are unsure.

Even among senders who are using DMARC, many have yet to implement a policy to either quarantine or reject emails that fail to pass authentication. Weak email authentication leaves an opening for bad actors to infiltrate inboxes.

RCS for Business messages include an official logo and checkmark. These visual indicators not only support branding, but they also serve as a sign that the message came from a verified sender. This involves a third-party review to confirm you are a legitimate business that is allowed to send RCS business messages.

Nearly 42% of consumers said these elements make it more likely they’d see the message as safe. Another 37% said they’d feel somewhat safer.

Younger consumers place even more trust in logos and checkmarks. Generation Z (71%) and millennials (59%) were more likely to view these messages as safe.

Keep in mind, RCS messages are encrypted during transit but only provide end-to-end encryption (EE2E) through peer-to-peer (P2P) Google Messages. Consumers who require more privacy may prefer other messaging applications, like WhatsApp, which does offer EE2E. Similar to RCS, the WhatsApp Business API also provides verified business accounts with checkmarks to increase trust.

In Chapter 3, we learned that 74% of consumers view fraud alert notifications as “very important.” That’s the highest of any type of customer update featured in our survey.

Fraud alert messages also help keep consumers’ personal finances safe. To do that, the message needs to arrive in a timely manner. How timely? ASAP according to most people.

More than 72% of respondents expect these notifications to show up immediately after fraudulent activity is detected. Nearly 15% expect the alert to arrive within five minutes. Altogether, that’s 87% who expect a fast response to potential fraud.

Because time is of the essence, the speediness and potential reach of text messaging makes it the ideal channel for fraud alerts.

Close to half of the consumers in our survey (49%) indicated they’ve felt concerned about their privacy when discussing health needs over common channels like email, text, and voice.

In this situation, a patient portal offers a sense of security for communicating sensitive matters. Nearly one-third of consumers chose the patient portal as ideal for privacy, while 31% would prefer phone calls and 25% chose email.

Of course, it is often channels like email and text messaging that notify patients when there’s a new message for them in the patient portal. Plus, when it’s time to log in to a patient portal, or you need to reset a password, other communication channels are needed to make that happen. Those messages are also designed to protect the patient portal and the sensitive data inside.