STI-GA Announces Policy Changes to Support Delegate Certificates and Toll-Free

The industry-led Secure Telephone Identity Governance Authority (STI-GA) today announced two policy changes in the SHAKEN ecosystem. The set of first policy changes will allow delegate certificates to be used by third-party callers as well as companies originating calls from toll-free numbers to also provide SHAKEN authentication.

With the STIR/SHAKEN protocol, a call is given the top level of attestation (A-level) only if the service provider signing the call can attest to the customer’s right to use that telephone number for outbound calls. A delegate certificate provides service providers a method to establish a customer’s right to use a telephone number when the service provider did not assign that number itself. The use of a delegated certificate enables calls to receive the highest level of attestation when a company sends an outbound call through one service provider using a number assigned to it by another service provider.

The STI-GA Board voted to support the optional use of delegate certificates within the SHAKEN ecosystem pursuant to ATIS Specification ATIS-1000092. Service providers may or may not choose to use delegate certificates, but the STI GA Board action to approve this policy change will clear the way for service providers that wish to use delegated certificates to do so.

Read the full release here.