HRPG OKs Recommendations on Hospital Robocall Blocking

The FCC Hospital Robocall Protection Group OK'd best practices for service providers and healthcare facilities to combat illegal robocalls and spoofing Monday. Recommendations for service providers include implementing secure telephone identity revisited (Stir) and signature-based handling of asserted information using tokens (Shaken) on IP portions of networks, prioritizing support for hospitals, and establishing notification protocols for robocall events. HRPG recommended hospitals establish a process to identify a robocall problem and coordinate with providers and law enforcement, consider joining threat intelligence and information sharing organizations, and consider implementing available robocall-blocking capabilities. Enforcement Bureau Telecom Consumers Division Chief Kristi Thompson recommended further implementation of blocking and labeling tools throughout hospital networks. Thompson recommended establishing safe harbors to incentivize increased call blocking and cooperation with trace-back requests. HRPG Chair Dave Summitt emphasized the need for these recommendations, citing recent Social Security spam calls at his employer, Moffitt Cancer Center. “In a four-day period, we totaled over 45,000 of these calls hitting our infrastructure,” Summitt said. Commissioner Brendan Carr abstained from the vote, saying he will wait to cast an official vote in case any of the recommendations are brought before the full commission. Earlier Monday, the FCC approved an order clarifying that government contractors must obtain consumer consent before making robocalls (see 2012140028).