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Saying Humbug to Telephony Fraud

By Chris DiMarco

Every year billions of dollars worth of PBX (News - Alert) fraud is perpetrated across almost every major industry. These days PBX systems are so widely available that many of its adopters are non-the wiser to the threats associated with fraud. Fraud can be something as simple as a staff member dialing long-distance on the company tab, or as sophisticated as attacks that forcibly enter VoIP systems to set up mailboxes or make calls from remote locations. Regardless of the level of skill employed by would-be scammers, PBX fraud is a pain that many companies know all too well.

According to the Communications Fraud Control Association 2009 Global Fraud Loss Survey, over $80 billion is lost each year to telephony fraud. Ninety-one percent of survey participants felt that global fraud losses had increased or stayed the same, and 78 percent said fraud has trended upwards within their company. While no research was conducted for 2010, results for the 2011 survey should be out later this month, and the trend is expected to continue moving up.

Humbug Telecom Labs was founded in August of 2010 with the purpose of combating PBX fraud. The problem with fraud prevention up until now has been that for the most part it’s handled after the fact, once the fraud has been committed, and providers are not communicating with one another to combat identifiable threats. The Humbug approach, on the other hand, puts calls through a series of filters designed to determine in real-time whether or not the connection is authorized, and allows for disconnects on the user side rather than the carrier side if something fishy is detected.

At this year’s AstriCon, Eric Klein, vice president of Sales and Marketing for Humbug, said, “The same fraud attack can hit multiple people and they can hit several companies one after another, once we’ve caught it the first time we can easily recognize and stop it on the second, third, fourth, and so-on” Humbug’s approach aggregates the signatures of the attacks so that they can quickly be identified as they’re happening in real time. “It’s the equivalent of an anti-virus for phone fraud,” Klein continued.

If the News of the World scandal has taught the public anything, it’s that fraudulent phone entry is easier than ever before, and that security for your phone is easily as important as for your PC. “This isn’t James Bond stuff anymore; this is the kind of stuff that people do. The way people look at security is upside down,” said Nir Simionovich, chief architect of Humbug Telecom.

Phone (News - Alert) fraud is a real, and it could potentially cause those unprepared to monitor it a lot of money. The Humbug solution may be all you need to stomp out phony telephony.