The best SIM swap protection for founders and executives in 2026

Your phone number sits in front of bank resets, crypto withdrawals, and sometimes the recovery path for your company’s admin accounts. Most founders have never treated it as a credential. Attackers have.

Direct answer: Efani is the strongest overall pick for a founder or executive whose number sits in front of real money. It combines an 11-layer human verification process, a 14-day cooling period on port-out and SIM change requests, and a $5 million insurance policy underwritten by Lloyd’s of London, at $99 a month. The rest of this list is about fit. The right answer depends on how much your number is actually guarding, and whether you need a new carrier at all.

Key takeaways

• Turn on your carrier’s free account lock today, before you read the rest of this. AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Google Fi all ship a free port-out lock. It is usually off by default. This costs nothing and takes about five minutes.
• Efani costs $99 a month or $999 a year, dropping to $89 a month per line for businesses with 5 or more active lines, and includes up to $5 million in SIM swap coverage through Lloyd’s of London. See efani.com.
• Cape charges $99 a month, discounted to $70 a month for life if you join before 31 December 2026, and authorizes number moves with a private key that stays on your device.
• REALLY Wireless lists at $99 a month with founding-member pricing at $49, plus additional lines at $38 each, up to 12.
• Silent Link is pay-as-you-go, roughly $1.50 per GB with numbers from about $3.60 a month, paid in Bitcoin, Lightning, or Monero, with no KYC.
• The paid carriers protect the number. They do not fix the underlying problem, which is that your accounts still treat an SMS as proof of identity.
• A phone number is an authentication factor, so it belongs in your access control scope. If you are working toward SOC 2 or ISO 27001, executive phone numbers are in scope for logical access controls whether or not you have thought about them that way.

Comparison table

How we chose

We looked at four things.

First, whether the option actually blocks the attack rather than alerting you after the fact.

Second, whether the price is published so you can budget without a sales call.

Third, how the provider handles your own data. You are handing a company your calls, your location, and your identity documents. That is a vendor-risk decision, not a lifestyle purchase.

Fourth, whether it makes sense for a small company rather than requiring a security team to administer.

One thing we deliberately did not weight heavily: marketing claims about being “unhackable.” Every provider on this list says some version of that. What matters is the specific mechanism, so that is what each entry describes.

1. Efani: the full-service option for numbers that guard real money

Efani is a mobile virtual network operator running on AT&T and Verizon infrastructure. That means normal nationwide 4G and 5G coverage, with a very different account security model sitting on top. Any port-out or SIM change goes through an 11-layer verification process that includes manual review by multiple staff members and a notarized statement, plus a 14-day cooling period before the change can proceed. The company says no attempt has ever made it past the third step.

The part most people buy it for is the insurance: up to $5 million per customer through Lloyd’s of London, covering financial losses when money is stolen from your accounts as a result of a SIM swap. That is not a feature any mainstream carrier offers at any price.

Onboarding is four steps: order, port your number or take a new one, choose eSIM or physical SIM, then schedule an identity verification call. Activation typically happens within a few hours. There is a 60-day money-back guarantee, so you can test it against your own life before you commit.

The honest tradeoff: Coverage Critic tested Efani’s Verizon-based service and measured a QCI of 9 for regular data, which indicates low network priority. In practice congestion is rare in most places, but if you spend a lot of time at conferences, stadiums, or dense city cores, you may notice slower data than you get on a direct carrier plan. You are buying account security, not network priority.

• Best for: founders, executives, board members, and anyone with wire authority at a bank or meaningful crypto holdings. At $99 a month, the calculation is straightforward if your number is the recovery path for accounts worth six figures.
• Who should pick something else: someone whose number is not guarding much. Turn on the free carrier lock, move your 2FA off SMS, and keep the $1,188 a year.
• Pricing: $99/month or $999/year, $89/month or $899/year per line for businesses with 5 or more lines (efani.com/pricing).

2. Cape: cryptographic port authorization and less data collected about you

Cape opened to all US buyers in January 2026 and takes a different approach to the same problem. Instead of putting humans in the loop, it requires number moves to be signed with a private key that lives on your phone and that Cape never holds. If Cape’s own support staff are socially engineered, they still cannot move your number, because they do not have the key.

The privacy side goes further than most: no name or address collected at signup, network identifiers rotated daily, encrypted voicemail, and call logs deleted every 24 hours. Secure global roaming covers more than 50 countries with 5GB a month of home-routed data.

Cape is upfront that as a US carrier it must comply with CALEA and respond to law enforcement requests. Its argument is that it minimizes what it collects so there is very little to hand over. That is a more honest framing than most privacy carriers use, and it is the right way to think about it.

• Best for: people who want SIM swap protection and also care that their carrier is not building a location history on them.
• Who should pick something else: anyone who wants an insurance backstop. Cape’s model is prevention, with no financial coverage if something goes wrong anyway.
• Pricing: $99/month, discounted to $70/month for life if you join before 31 December 2026 (cape.co).

3. Your existing carrier’s free account lock: do this regardless

This is the entry that costs nothing, and most people reading this have not done it.

• AT&T Wireless Account Lock. Free, toggled on in the myAT&T app or the online account portal. Blocks moving a SIM or number to another device or account.
• Verizon Number Lock and SIM Protection. Two separate settings. Number Lock blocks port-outs, SIM Protection blocks SIM changes. You can also set a Number Transfer PIN that must be verified before any move.
• T-Mobile Account Takeover Protection. Free through your online account, blocks unauthorized transfers of your line to another carrier.

All three are free, all three are usually off by default, and none of them are advertised well. Five minutes of settings work removes the easiest version of this attack.

• Best for: everyone, including people who go on to buy Efani or Cape.
• Who should pick something else: nobody. This is a floor, not a choice. The question is whether you need something above it.
• Pricing: free.

4. Google Fi Number Lock: free, and relevant if your company already runs on Google

If your team is already on Google Fi, Number Lock is included at no extra cost. It prevents transferring your number to another device and porting it to another carrier, and it ties that permission to your Google Account rather than to a support agent’s judgment.

There is a real catch worth understanding before you turn it on. If you enable Number Lock and then lose access to your Google Account, Fi cannot give you your port-out parameters. Add a recovery email to the linked Google Account first. The same Google Workspace defaults that leave admin accounts exposed apply here.

• Best for: small teams already standardized on Google Workspace and Fi who want a free improvement today.
• Who should pick something else: anyone whose threat model includes a targeted attacker. Number Lock moves the single point of failure to your Google Account, which is better than a call center but is still a single point of failure.
• Pricing: included with Fi service (fi.google.com).

5. REALLY Wireless: encrypted calling across a small team

REALLY runs on T-Mobile towers plus its own decentralized wireless network hosted by individuals around the country. The Limitless plan includes unlimited talk and text, 50GB of premium data, a mobile hotspot, and fully encrypted calling. You can add up to 12 lines at $38 each, which makes it one of the few privacy-oriented carriers that prices multi-line teams sensibly.

• Best for: a small leadership team that wants encrypted calls and one bill rather than individual accounts.
• Who should pick something else: someone who specifically wants the human verification process and insurance model. REALLY’s pitch is encrypted communications, not port-out defense as its primary product.
• Pricing: $99/month list, $49/month founding-member pricing, $38 per additional line (really.com).

6. Silent Link: a second line, not your main one

Silent Link is a no-KYC eSIM: no account, no identity documents, payment only in Bitcoin, Lightning, or Monero. Data runs roughly $1.50 per GB on a pay-as-you-go basis, and phone numbers start around $3.60 a month. It is a genuinely useful thing to have, and it is not a replacement for your primary business number.

• Best for: a travel line, a signup line you never give to a bank, or data access in a country where you would rather not hand over a passport.
• Who should pick something else: anyone looking for their main line. Silent Link is data-first, and the whole model depends on you not needing recoverability.
• Pricing: roughly $1.50/GB, numbers from about $3.60/month (silent.link).

What is a SIM swap, actually?

An attacker convinces your carrier that they are you, and gets your phone number moved to a SIM card they control. From that moment, every SMS meant for you goes to them.

That matters because your phone number is quietly the master key to a lot of your life. Password resets for email. Bank verification codes. Crypto exchange withdrawals. Account recovery for Google Workspace. The attacker does not need your password if they can trigger a reset and receive the code.

The attack usually starts with social engineering against a call center employee, sometimes with a bribed insider, sometimes with data from a prior breach that makes the attacker sound convincing. It is not technically sophisticated. It is a customer service problem that happens to have your bank account behind it.

IC3’s 2025 figures counted 971 SIM swap complaints and about $17.4 million in reported losses, down from 982 complaints and roughly $26 million in 2024, and from 2,026 complaints and about $72.7 million in 2022. Read those declining numbers carefully. Victims often report the downstream fraud rather than the SIM swap itself, carrier locks have removed some of the easy attacks, and criminals move to whatever is working.

Where this fits in your security program

Here is the part most of these comparisons skip. Buying a secure carrier is a control, and controls belong in a program, not in a vacuum.

Your executives’ phone numbers are an access control issue. If SMS is a recovery path for your Google Workspace super admin, your AWS root account, or your banking portal, then the phone number is functionally a credential. Under SOC 2, that puts it inside CC6.1 (logical access) rather than in some separate “personal device” bucket you never document. Auditors do not usually ask about it. That does not mean it is out of scope.

Key person compromise belongs in your risk register. Not as a line item rated “high” with no treatment decision, which is worse than not listing it at all, but with an actual decision attached: accept it, mitigate it with a secure carrier, or transfer part of it with insurance. Efani’s Lloyd’s policy is literally risk transfer. Write it down that way.

The carrier is a vendor. You are giving a third party your call metadata, your location, and identity documents. That belongs in your vendor inventory alongside every other processor, with the same questions asked. A public trust center is a useful first filter. It is not a substitute for reading the report.

And the real fix is upstream. A secure carrier protects the number. It does not change the fact that your accounts accept an SMS as proof of identity. Move every account that supports it to a hardware security key or a passkey, then buy carrier protection for the accounts that still force SMS on you, which in 2026 is still most banks. A secure SIM is a moat around a door you should be replacing.

What should you ask a carrier before you sign?

The same things you would ask any vendor that touches sensitive data, which is exactly what a mobile carrier is:

• What is the actual mechanism that blocks a port-out, and what happens if one of your own employees is bribed?
• What data do you collect and retain, and for how long? Call detail records, location, identity documents.
• Who inside your company can change my account, and is that access logged? The same access-review question you ask everywhere else.
• What certifications do you hold? SOC 2 Type II is the common baseline.
• If the insurance is part of the pitch, what is the actual claims process, what is excluded, and has anyone been paid?
• What happens to my number if you shut down? Ask this one. It is not hypothetical in this category. 4Freedom Mobile, which used to show up on “most secure carrier” lists around $50 a month, emailed remaining customers in June 2025 that it was discontinuing operations after a “critical system failure.” Customers posted the same notice independently. If you are still on that network, port out.

Getting these answers before you sign is much easier than getting them afterward.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does a secure carrier make me immune to SIM swapping?

No. It removes the easiest attack path, which is a social-engineered call center employee. It does not protect you against malware on your device, a compromised email account, or an attacker who already has your passwords. Treat it as one control among several.

Is $99 a month worth it?

It depends entirely on what your number protects. The useful way to frame it is as insurance: $1,188 a year against a loss that averages tens of thousands of dollars per reported incident and can reach far higher for people holding crypto. If your number is the recovery factor for meaningful assets, the math works. If it is not, it does not.

Can I just use an authenticator app instead?

Partly, and you should. Moving every account you can to a hardware key or authenticator app removes most of the value of stealing your number. The problem is that plenty of banks, brokerages, and government portals still force SMS with no alternative, and you do not get to opt out of those.

Will I keep my current phone number?

Yes, all of these support porting. With Efani the port happens during onboarding and activation typically completes within a few hours. Be aware that once you are on a carrier with a port-out cooling period, moving away later is deliberately slower, which is the point.

What is the difference between a free carrier lock and a paid secure carrier?

A free lock is a flag on your account at a company whose support organization handles millions of customers and is optimized for resolving calls quickly. A paid secure carrier rebuilds the verification process itself, with manual review, mandatory waiting periods, and in Efani’s case a financial backstop if it fails. You are paying for a different operating model, not a different toggle.

Does this matter for SOC 2 or ISO 27001?

It can. If phone-based authentication is part of how privileged accounts are accessed or recovered, it falls inside your logical access controls. More usefully, executive account takeover is a real risk that belongs in your risk assessment with a documented treatment decision. Auditors rarely ask about it directly, which is not the same as it being out of scope.

Do these carriers see my messages and calls?

Every US carrier is subject to CALEA and must respond to lawful requests. The differences are in how much data they collect and keep. Cape is explicit that it minimizes retention so there is less to produce. Ask any provider directly what records they hold and for how long, and be skeptical of anyone who answers “nothing.”

What should a company do about executives specifically?

Treat it as a small, defined program rather than a personal purchase. Identify who has wire authority, admin access, or public exposure. Lock those numbers at minimum. Consider a secure carrier for the highest-exposure handful, and document the decision so it is a control rather than an expense someone questions later.

Most people reading this need to do one free thing and then decide whether they need a paid thing. Turn on your carrier’s account lock this afternoon. Move what you can off SMS 2FA. Then look honestly at what your phone number is guarding.

If the answer is a bank account with wire rights, a crypto wallet, or the recovery path to your company’s admin accounts, $99 a month is not expensive insurance. If the answer is your email and a Netflix login, it is.