National Anti-Fraud Platform: Technology for Secure Collaboration & Compliance

Rocco Innovators 2025 Showcase.

Telecom fraud is at crisis levels, impacting operators, enterprises, and subscribers while harming trust in voice and SMS services. From spoofing, phishing, and spam to SIM box fraud, PBX hacking, AIT, and international revenue share fraud (IRSF), these schemes not only cause billions of dollars in losses but also fuel misinformation, election interference, and national security threats.

Despite ongoing efforts, existing solutions fall short. Firewalls and fraud management systems work in isolation, while STIR/SHAKEN and similar national frameworks are costly, lack central fraud visibility, and remain fragmented. Meanwhile, regulatory pressure is growing, but enforcement often relies on punitive measures and complex legal frameworks rather than proactive cooperation and effective technology.

This is where AB Handshake’s National Anti-Fraud Platform (NAFP) comes in—a nationwide fraud prevention solution combining real-time validation with AI-driven fraud detection, eliminating telecom fraud at its source. By enabling collaboration between operators, regulators, and enterprises, NAFP shifts the focus from reactive and polarizing enforcement to proactive, collaborative fraud prevention.

In this article, we’ll look at the current fraud landscape, why existing fraud prevention methods fail, how NAFP works, and the impact it’s already having in national deployments. We’ll also look at the business case for adoption, demonstrating how NAFP benefits all stakeholders—including operators, regulators, and enterprises.

The Growing Threat of Telecom Fraud

Fraud schemes such as International Revenue Share Fraud (IRSF), CLI spoofing, SMS originator spoofing, and AI-driven scams are becoming more advanced, exploiting gaps between regulatory enforcement, operator defenses, and cross-network collaboration. The financial impact is staggering, with telecom fraud losses totaling $38.95 billion annually, accounting for 2.5% of total telecom revenue. Without industry-wide collaboration, these losses will continue to escalate.

The following statistics, drawn from the GLF Fraud Report 2024, illustrate the full scope of telecom fraud’s impact on operators, subscribers, and enterprises.

Revenue Loss for Operators

Operators are facing billions in fraud-related losses every year, primarily driven by wholesale and interconnect fraud in voice and SMS. Fraudsters exploit call masking and detection delays, making it difficult for operators to trace and take action on fraudulent traffic in real time.

• International Revenue Share Fraud (IRSF): As reported by the CFCA Global Fraud Loss Survey, IRSF caused $6.23 billion in annual losses in 2023. Things haven’t improved since, the GLF Fraud Report 2024 notes that 48% of operators reported high volumes of IRSF attacks. Fraudsters manipulate roaming and interconnect agreements to inflate call charges and siphon revenue.
• CLI Spoofing: Now the top fraud concern for operators, with 55% reporting high volumes (up from 49% in 2023). This technique enables various interconnect and wholesale fraud types that directly contribute to billions in financial losses across the industry.
• Erosion of consumer trust: 76% of carriers say fraudulent calls and texts have reduced subscriber confidence in telecom providers, and 61% agree this encourages a shift to OTT messaging services—a direct revenue loss for traditional carriers.

Operators are also struggling to manage growing compliance costs, with 76% planning to increase spending on voice and SMS fraud detection in 2024. Despite increasing budgets, many still lack the real-time intelligence and cross-network cooperation needed to stay ahead of evolving fraud tactics. Shrinking voice margins add further pressure—64% of operators have made fraud prevention a top priority in 2024, up from 39% in 2023.

Subscribers at Risk

Fraud is becoming more sophisticated and aggressive, with AI-powered scams, robocalls, and phishing attacks targeting consumers at an unprecedented scale.

• AI-driven robocalls and voice cloning: Losses from fraudulent robocalls are projected to hit $76 billion globally in 2025, with North America alone accounting for over 50% of fraud-related financial damage in 2023.
• Vishing: 41% of carriers report high volumes of phishing calls in 2024.
  
  
  • In 2024, CLI spoofing surged as the top fraud concern, with 55% of operators reporting high volumes of fraud, up from 49% in 2023—many linked to increasingly sophisticated vishing scams.
     
• Spam Calls: In 2024, spam calls were reported as a high-volume fraud type by 61% of carriers, up from 46% in 2023, surpassing phishing and robocalls.
• SMS-Based Fraud: Malware-based attacks, leading to account takeovers and unauthorized transactions, are now considered high volume by 22% of respondents. Additionally, 59% of carriers estimate SMS phishing causes a high level of financial impact on end-users.

Consumers are demanding more security and transparency, but without a collaborative industry response, fraudsters will continue exploiting weak points in global telecom networks. Eventually, national regulatory bodies are forced to enact legislation to protect citizens from fraud and nuisance traffic. 

Enterprise Communication Under Attack

Enterprises rely on telecom services for secure authentication, customer engagement, and critical operations—but fraudsters are now weaponizing telecom vulnerabilities to exploit businesses and their customers.

• PBX Hacking: Leads to multi-million-dollar losses annually as fraudsters infiltrate business phone systems to make unauthorized international calls.
• Wangiri 2.0 (Call-Back Fraud): Enterprises and customers are tricked into calling premium-rate numbers, resulting in hundreds of millions in lost revenue.
• Brand Impersonation & Spoofed Caller IDs: With 24% of carriers reporting high SMS originator spoofing, fraudsters impersonate financial institutions, e-commerce platforms, and service providers—leading to tens of millions in direct fraud-related losses annually for major banks alone.
• AI-Generated Scams: Fraudsters now use deepfake voice technology to impersonate corporate executives, manipulate transactions, and defraud businesses of millions.
• SMS Traffic Pumping (AIT, AGT): Costing $62 billion annually, artificial generation of SMS traffic affects all verticals, but disproportionately affecting banks, international businesses, and customer support services reliant on SMS authentication such as OTP and 2FA.

With fraud becoming more automated and scalable, enterprises need proactive fraud prevention strategies to protect their customers, brand reputation, and financial stability.

Why Existing Fraud Solutions Are Failing

Despite increased efforts to fight telecom fraud, existing solutions remain fragmented, reactive, and ultimately ineffective against evolving threats. Operators, enterprises, and regulators deploy various countermeasures, but fraudsters continue to exploit gaps between networks, regulations, and enforcement, allowing fraud to persist and evolve.

Limitations of Operator-Level Solutions

Operators rely on firewalls, fraud management systems (FMS), and number intelligence services, but these tools operate in isolation and have fundamental weaknesses. Namely, without cooperative frameworks to verify roaming status and validate call and message sending details, these solutions are unable to effectively detect spoofing, which is the enabling factor for many fraud types.

• Outdated, Reactive Defenses: Traditional firewalls and FMS depend on anomaly detection, which struggles with false positives and negatives. Fraudsters adapt quickly, rendering rule-based systems ineffective without constant updates.
• Ineffective Call Labeling: Some operators tag suspicious calls rather than blocking them outright. However, spoofed calls often appear as ‘verified’ when labeling relies on number databases, misleading consumers rather than protecting them. 
• Number Validation Services Fail: 75% of spoofed fraudulent traffic now uses legitimate numbers, making number validation services effective in only 25% of spoofing cases.

Even as 77% of operators plan to increase spending on SMS fraud detection in 2024, these investments remain reactionary rather than proactive as fraudsters continuously shift tactics.

Issues with Existing National Solutions

A national approach to fraud prevention is a much-needed and significant improvement. However, there is no clear front-runner for global adoption. STIR/SHAKEN offers some defense but comes with serious limitations:

• Limited Scope: Only authenticates caller IDs within national borders, leaving international calls exposed.
• Bypassing with Real Numbers: Fraudsters use legitimate but compromised numbers to evade verification.
• No SMS Coverage: Voice-only solutions fail to combat SMS fraud like smishing or AIT.
• High Costs, Low Adoption: Implementation is expensive, especially for smaller operators, leading to inconsistent adoption.
• Reactive Enforcement: Relies on post-event analysis, allowing fraud to slip through before enforcement catches up.

Even with national regulations tightening, enforcement remains patchy and inconsistent, giving fraudsters plenty of ways to bypass controls.

Regulatory Pains

In 2024, global regulators ramped up penalties, emphasizing the punitive nature of enforcement that seeks to hold operators accountable for failing to address fraud

• The UK’s ICO: Fined multiple organizations £340,000 for 1.43 million unsolicited calls.
• Italy’s Garante: Fined an MNO €7.6 million for aggressive robocalling and data misuse.
• Australia’s ACMA: Issued fines to several operators for anti-spam violations, including a $515,040 fine for failure to prevent unsolicited texts.
• The US FCC: In 2024, stricter rules were introduced on robocalls and VoIP fraud, issuing multi-million-dollar fines.

These actions show stronger regulatory pressure but highlight key flaws:

• Fines Don’t Stop Fraudsters: Punishing operators increases their costs but doesn’t deter fraudsters who exploit new loopholes.
• Complex Compliance: Frequently triggered by complaints, regulatory resources are spent on investigation and enforcement, while provider resources are spent on appeals, defense, and legal services. 
• Fragmented Enforcement: Disjointed regulations across jurisdictions allow fraudsters to exploit gaps.

The Urgent Need for Industry-Wide Collaboration

With 61% of carriers reporting that unwanted traffic is pushing users toward OTT services, the telecom industry faces an urgent need to rebuild trust. The GLF Fraud Report 2024 makes it clear: global collaboration and AI-driven solutions are essential.

Instead of relying solely on punitive measures and post-event enforcement, the industry needs a real-time, collaborative fraud prevention framework—uniting operators, enterprises, and regulators to stop fraud at its source.

AB Handshake’s National Anti-Fraud Platform

The National Anti-Fraud Platform (NAFP) is designed to stop telecom fraud before it starts. It combines real-time call and SMS validation with AI-driven fraud detection to protect operators, enterprises, and subscribers.

End-to-End Validation

At the heart of NAFP is a patented end-to-end validation system that authenticates every call and SMS before they connect, blocking or labeling spoofed and fraudulent traffic at the network level. How It Works:

1. Call Initiation: A call is sent from an originating network and routed through carriers to the recipient. Simultaneously, the originator sends the call details to NAFP.
2. Validation Request: The terminating operator sends a validation query to NAFP to confirm the legitimacy of the call.
3. Registry Coordination: NAFP compares the call details from the terminating operator with the details of the originator to confirm whether the originating number actually placed the call.
4. Verification & Response: 
     
   
   • If a matching call event is found, NAFP confirms the call’s legitimacy, allowing it to proceed.
   • If no match is found, NAFP returns a negative validation response, flagging the call as fraudulent. 
      
5. Fraud Prevention Action: Based on NAFP’s response, the terminating operator can block, label, or escalate the call for further investigation.

The same process is used to validate SMS messages. Originally designed for international roaming, this validation system—when scaled nationally—is 100% effective in stopping locally spoofed calls and messages.

Why It’s Effective:

• Real-time, out-of-band validation blocks or labels spoofed traffic before it connects.
• Verifies legitimate traffic to reduce false positives and maintain service quality.
• Restores trust across telecom networks for operators, enterprises, and subscribers.

AI-Powered Fraud Detection

While end-to-end validation eliminates spoofing, fraudsters increasingly exploit international and legitimate local numbers as well as complex routing in order to bypass detection. NAFP’s AI-powered fraud detection system identifies these sophisticated fraud tactics using machine learning and real-time anomaly detection.

Benefits:

• Analyzes: Over 200 real-time parameters for each call and message.
• Utilizes: Predictive models trained on 200+ million call attempts daily.
• Detects: Anomalous traffic patterns that validation alone might miss.
• Blocks/Labels: Automatically, with minimal disruption to legitimate traffic.

How AI-Based Fraud Detection Works

1. Call Initiation: A call is placed using an international or legitimate local number, which is routed through carriers to the terminating operator.
2. Fraud Check Begins: Since international traffic cannot always be directly validated, the terminating operator sends a query to NAFP’s AI engine for analysis.
3. AI-Powered Analysis: The system evaluates the request, analyzing traffic patterns, message behaviors, and other indicators to detect fraud.
4. Decision & Response: 
   
   
   • If no fraud is detected, the call is confirmed as legitimate and allowed to proceed.
   • If fraud is detected, the terminating operator is alerted and can block, label, or flag the call based on its risk level.

With a false detection rate of <1%, NAFP’s AI layer adds powerful protection without compromising user experience and legitimate traffic volumes.

Fraud Types Detected

Together, end-to-end validation and AI-driven detection prevent:

• IRSF (International Revenue Share Fraud)
• Wangiri & Wangiri 2.0 (Call-Back Fraud)
• Artificially Inflated SMS Traffic (AIT)
• Smishing & Vishing (including from legitimate and international numbers)
• PBX Hacking
• Flash Calls (using both spoofed and legitimate local numbers)
• Short Stopping
• CLI & Sender ID Spoofing (Impersonation)
• Robocalls & Spam Calls
• SIM Box Fraud
• Call Stretching
• A2P Bypass
• International Misinformation Campaigns (fake political ads, impersonation, fake alerts, etc.)

Seamless Integration Across Networks

NAFP isn’t just powerful—it’s built for seamless integration. Rolling out a nationwide fraud prevention system doesn’t have to be disruptive. NAFP supports all major signaling protocols and network types, making it compatible with everything from legacy systems to 5G and beyond.

Comprehensive Compatibility

NAFP integrates directly with existing telecom infrastructure, supporting key protocols like SIP, RADIUS, Diameter, HTTP API, and ISUP. It connects smoothly with gateway switches, SBCs, IMS elements, billing systems, and SIP proxies—all while operating fully out-of-band to ensure no disruption to call handling or service quality.

Fast, Scalable Rollouts

Deployments are quick and efficient, with nationwide rollouts completed in just 2–3 months and minimal disruption to existing operations. NAFP is designed to scale alongside your network, with full support for VoLTE, 5G, and future technologies like 6G.

Broader Benefits Across Stakeholders

NAFP delivers value across the entire telecom ecosystem, safeguarding networks, users, and businesses alike.

Subscribers benefit from enhanced privacy, stronger scam protection, and restored trust in voice and messaging services. Enterprises can protect their brand integrity, shielding themselves from impersonation, PBX hacking, and Wangiri 2.0 fraud. Operators gain increased A2P revenues, reduced fraud losses, higher customer satisfaction, and relief from mounting regulatory pressures. Meanwhile, governments strengthen national security, safeguard election integrity, reduce social tensions, and promote economic growth through safer and more reliable communications.

Additional Use Cases

With a centralized platform to screen all traffic, national fraud prevention strategies become easier to enforce: 

• Identify and Block Stolen Devices: A national IMEI database helps track and prevent the use of compromised phones, reducing fraud linked to stolen handsets.
• Implement Smart Fraud Alerts: Instead of outright blocking, call and SMS labeling can warn users about potentially suspicious communications, aligning with regulatory frameworks.
• Strengthen Regulatory Compliance: Enforce Do Not Originate (DNO) and Do Not Call (DNC) lists, ensuring stricter control over fraudulent traffic and unauthorized marketing.
• Enhance National Spam Management: A centralized consent database enables better spam prevention strategies, helping consumers manage unwanted communications.

Want to learn more about how NAFP is changing telecom fraud prevention?

Why AB Handshake?

AB Handshake is a global leader in voice and SMS fraud prevention, backed by 20+ years of telecom expertise. Trusted by operators and regulatory bodies worldwide, AB Handshake has consistently driven innovation in fraud prevention, setting industry standards for effective, scalable solutions.

Now Is the Time for Collective Action

Telecom fraud is a growing threat that impacts every part of the communications ecosystem—operators, regulators, enterprises, and subscribers. Current solutions are no longer enough. Proactive, collaborative action is essential to protect networks, revenues, and end-users.

Join the Fight Against Fraud

Protect subscribers, enterprises, and operator revenues with AB Handshake’s National Anti-Fraud Platform. Contact us today to see how NAFP can help your country combat fraud in voice and SMS.