Twilio’s Kelley Robinson: What If We Had TLS for Phone Numbers?

This talk will discuss the latest advancements with STIR (Secure Telephone Identity Revisited) and SHAKEN (Signature-based Handling of Asserted information using toKENs), new tech standards that use well accepted public key cryptography methods to validate caller identification. We’ll discuss the path and challenges to getting this implemented industry wide, where this tech will fall short, and what we can do to limit exposure to call spam and fraud in the meantime.

Kelley Robinson (@kelleyrobinson) works on the Account Security team at Twilio, helping developers manage and secure customer identity in their software applications. Previously she worked in a variety of infrastructure and data engineering roles at startups in San Francisco. She believes in making technical concepts, especially security, accessible and approachable for new audiences. In her spare time, Kelley is an avid home cook and greatly enjoys reorganizing her Brooklyn kitchen to accommodate completely necessary small appliance purchases.