Dial Through Fraud – also known as Toll Fraud or PBX (Private Branch Exchange) Hacking – is gaining momentum in the North East with one leading business recently left liable for call charges in excess of £5,000 over a single weekend. Gateshead-based Executel has therefore extended its bespoke Managed Administration Service to include a new fraud monitoring and system protection tool in a bid to combat the growing problem.
Executel’s solution, which both monitors and analyses call traffic in real-time 24 hours a day, can be programmed to detect a variety of call types and calling patterns including premium rate numbers, international calls and calls made outside office hours. This enables abnormal activity to be flagged as and when it occurs and an automatic alert sent via SMS or email to a nominated company representative.
Of the new service, Tim Price, Managing Director of Executel, said: “Fraudulent activity is an industry-wide problem which currently costs the UK telecoms sector an estimated £1.3 billion each year. However, this figure is unfortunately on the increase as the economic downturn worsens and fraudsters seek to penetrate communications systems at the expense of others.
“In these unprecedented times, businesses have a collective responsibility to be extra vigilant and ensure that they put sufficient measures in place to safeguard communications equipment against both internal and external attack and we are therefore providing them with the means to do so.
“Telephone fraud threatens all businesses and while traditional call logging systems can help, these solutions tend to be simply reactive. We are therefore offering a new full-managed service that can anticipate, detect and prevent potential exposure to fraudulent activity. Moreover, whilst we are a Mitel reseller, the technology can be programmed to work with almost all telephone systems including Avaya, Cisco, Nortel, Siemens, Toshiba and Samsung.
“I can’t stress how important it is for companies to review their telephone system security in order to minimise the risk of falling victim to this type of criminal activity. Telephony fraud can be one of the most profitable and easiest crimes to commit because it’s difficult to detect until the damage is already done. Businesses must therefore treat their PBX system in the same way they treat their computer network; no one would leave their network without adequate security measures and it’s an unfortunate sign of the times that we must now do the same with our telephony.”