Telecommunications fraud is an ongoing problem that continues to attract attention year after year. According to research conducted by the Communications Fraud Control Association, telecoms fraud caused a staggering $29.2 billion in fraudulent charges last year alone with $3.8 billion in financial losses resulting from PBX hacking and toll fraud on enterprise communications networks.
“Today’s perpetuators of telecoms fraud are using advanced, fast moving technologies that significantly outpace the existing fraud protection practices of most telcos, leaving enterprises exposed to the expensive consequences of telecoms fraud,” explained Arnd Baranowski, CEO of Oculeus, a Germany-based provider of telecommunications management solutions.
Earlier today, Oculeus announced the launch of a new telecoms fraud protection service aimed at helping enterprises reduce their exposure to PBX hacking and toll fraud in real-time.
This new service is has been named Oculeus-Protect and it is intended to prevent false charges resulting from unauthorized usage of enterprise telecommunication channels by cybercriminals and other perpetrators of telecom fraud.
The company indicated that the service can block fraudulent telecommunications traffic within milliseconds and it is independent of an enterprise’s telecommunications service provider.
“There is a clear and definite need for our new telecoms fraud protection service,” continued Baranowski. “In many places, the burden of proving and even paying for the false charges resulting from telecoms fraud are on the enterprise and relying solely on the telco for protection is not sufficient.”
The service is now available throughout North America, South America and Europe. The company also intends to make the service available in other regions later next month.
Oculeus-Protect runs from regional Cloud environments managed by the company.
As part of the service activation process, an enterprise’s PBX administrator will need to register the organization’s PBX devices in order for call signaling flows to be monitored by the service.
The technology behind Oculeus’ service is based on anomaly detection. The technology first profiles the enterprise’s communications network and builds a baseline of expected telecommunications activities. The technology then continuously monitors the enterprise’s communications network for traffic anomalies and other patterns that are typical of telecoms fraud.
“Any suspicious calls from outside the enterprise are detected immediately and those confirmed to be fraudulent are instantly blocked,” explained Baranowski. “In countries like the US, the enterprise is actually financially responsible when fraudsters highjack your PBX and dial up a $40,000 bill over a weekend,” said Dan Baker, Director of Technology Research Institute, a market research firm that follows the fraud control software market. “In a simple and transparent way to achieve defense-in-depth, the new Oculeus service provides very affordable insurance.”
Oculeus is offering this new service based on a monthly fee with pricing according the number of PBX devices that are protected.
