Telecoms fraud results in damages that are twice the size of credit card fraud - around $25 billion per year - and continues to grow.
Added to this is the problem that Hosted UC and SIP service providers are already fighting to maintain high per-user profit margins in an increasingly competitive market. Revenue assurance departments attempt to increase that profitability by minimising losses – but for many providers toll fraud only enters the equation as an accepted and expected loss that’s simply too hard to tackle. This is particularly true for mid-size service providers with fewer resources but recent advances in technology means that no longer has to be the case.
Fraud causes more damage than simple monetary. Fraud incidents cause disruption to business operations and strain relationships throughout the channel. By adopting a comprehensive anti-fraud solution, service providers can reduce customer churn as well as protect and increase profit margins.
Here are the 7 key challenges for telecoms service providers, and how to overcome them:
1 - Synchronicity and speed of action
Fraud is fast moving but tier 1 carriers are not – we’re talking thousands of employees, and where responsibility for revenue assurance spans multiple departments and affects multiple systems. The average time for a human-based team to identify fraudulent activity can take many hours, which gives plenty of time for fraudsters to make multiple calls via multiple devices, across multiple customers, and move on, before the carrier is even aware fraud has taken place.
Fraud prevention doesn’t need to be a manual process. Implementing a fraud protection solution that automatically kills calls in progress, recognises patterns and adapts will mean that fraud is identified in seconds and actively reduces damages.
2 - Ever-moving goal posts
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Carl Boraman[/caption]
Methods of fraud are changing. "Pickpocketing", where lots of small calls that are hard to identify as fraudulent are made over time, is more common than ever before. Furthermore, there’s an increase in incidents where a combination of technology is used – for example, where a user makes a call in response to a spoofed number sent via email or SMS and the premium-rate nature of the call is masked from their handset.
The methods used don’t even need to be sophisticated. There are many cases where calls are made from a hotel room and the scale of the damage is only revealed when the bill is pulled at the time of check out, which could be well after the agreed carrier clawback periods.
Partnering with a provider that not only has solutions that make use of machine learning to self-learn and adapt, but also that has a deep understanding of how attack vectors are changing, will put service providers in a position of knowledge and confidence.
3 - Wide product portfolios
Carriers generally use a wide variety of technologies to provide comms to companies, however, finding a solution that can adequately protect all of them is a particular challenge. Being able to offer the same assurances to end customers and the channel, regardless of the product taken, is important.
