Telecom fraud management has been around since the beginning of telecommunications. While technology has evolved to stop most of the fraud over the years, we haven't been able to stop all of it.
While that sounds pretty good, even if a small percentage of the total fraud attacks succeed, it still leads to billions of dollars in losses for operators and other businesses around the world each year.
These fraud schemes go by some of the following dubious names, though this list isn't conclusive:
And many others.
The CFCA has collected
data indicating that each of these schemes, alone, cause billions of dollars in revenue losses for telecom companies each year:
- $5bn in losses caused by International Revenue Share Fraud (IRSF) each year
- $4bn caused by Call Stretching and Short-stopping
- $3.6bn caused by PBX hacking
- $2.7bn caused by Interconnect Bypass
- $2bn caused by CLI Spoofing
- $0.9bn caused by Robocalls
These are staggering numbers. But, moreover, they illustrate the importance of constantly innovating on existing telecom fraud management technologies to stay ahead of scammers.
Because even if fraudsters gain a small foothold in our market, it leads to billions of dollars in losses. It's estimated that most companies lose about
5% of their yearly revenue to fraud. While that may not sound too intimidating, 5% of yearly revenue can equal millions of dollars in losses.
In short, we've come a long way with telecom fraud management. However, the fragmented nature of telecommunication processes has always made it almost impossible to stop this problem, once and for all.
Today, telecommunications fraud continues on a scale depicted by the above CFCA numbers.
However, by uniting telecom providers around the globe and establishing a 'collective immunity' from fraud, this can change.
This idea came about as the team behind AB Handshake, a telecom fraud management company, set out to find a way to stop telecom fraud around the globe, once and for all. Certain pieces were missing from traditional telecom fraud management systems that were leaving holes for fraudsters to take advantage of. Upon seeking a way to 'plug' these holes, a solution emerged.
The result is a system that achieves 'collective immunity' to fraud, akin to the way a vaccine establishes collective immunity among populations to viral pandemics.
To better understand why and how this solution of 'collective immunity' works, it's best to understand the interconnection of a call between operators and why it's so vulnerable.
Let's have a look.