Mothering Sunday-say it with fraud

Mothering Sunday - say it with fraud Mother's Day is identified as the number one day for telephone fraud! Mother's Day is celebrated the world over. It is the one day when mothers around the globe are treated to breakfast in bed, cards, flowers and who knows, someone might even do the washing up! Children who have long since flown the nest still send cards and more importantly make that phone call to Mum. However, Azure, BT's revenue assurance specialist, has warned companies that they are at risk from increased telecommunications fraud on Mother's Day. To most of us, the Mother's Day call is nothing more then a son or daughter's duty, something to which we don't give a second thought. However to the telecommunications industry it can create more then just a small headache, the increasing awareness of methods of fraud coupled with the need to make long distance calls on one particular day proves all to tempting to telephone criminals. Telephone fraud is a $40billion world-wide problem 1) and this is no more apparent than over the seasonal holidays and special days. Incredibly in the USA, Mother's Day has been identified as the most popular day for telephony fraud. BTexact Technologies' revenue assurance specialist Azure is all too aware of this problem and takes it very seriously. Companies and operators need to identify the methods of fraud and implement solutions to thwart the criminals. Senior managers at Azure are committed to tackling this problem, as John Bicknell, Azure's interim CEO, explains: "We are not just talking about one or two people abusing the system but about a full scale criminal operation. There is often an increase in fraud over holiday periods and special occasions and Mother's Day is a particular target. "The types of fraud carried out range from individual abuse of phone cards right up to more sophisticated fraudsters who can even programme private exchange systems to 'bridge' calls so that companies can end up paying charges from phones not even on their systems. Telephone fraud is not a victimless crime." However, there are steps that companies and individuals can take to protect themselves against the risk of fraud. These include: · installing PIN numbers on phones and faxes and setting up temporary international and premium rate service call barring; · carrying out regular audits of switches to ensure any vulnerabilities identified are fixed; · considering limiting remote access to voicemail and DISA facilities, these can be open to abuse during weekend and holiday periods; · if possible, assign one manager to be on alert for a call notification service to alert them of unusual call activity on outgoing lines during weekend and holiday periods; · keeping phone card PIN numbers private, not sharing them even with friends John says the message is simple: "Don't be complacent, ensure you have effective fraud detection and management systems. Products such as BT's Call Alert (www.bt.com/callalert) watches your business 24 hours a day and gives you peace of mind every day of the year." Ends Editors' notes About Azure Azure, www.azure-solutions.com, currently an incuband within BTexact Technologies' corporate incubator, Brightstar, is built on award-winning revenue assurance products and services developed by BT. Its main objective is to enable communications operators worldwide to reduce losses from malicious and unintentional revenue leakage. Backed by a deep knowledge pool and patented systems developed through many years of BT experience, Azure has been launched to enable BT to gain greater value from its investment in revenue assurance solutions by making the knowledge and tools available to other operators. Azure offers a range of revenue assurance products including; mediation management, interconnect accounting, route optimisation and fraud prevention. In addition, Azure offers consultancy, ASP and integration services. BT Interconnect Solutions, which forms a major part of Azure's business, won the award for the most innovative billing product in April at the World Billing Awards 2001. About BTexact Technologies & Brightstar BTexact Technologies offers expertise and experience in communications technology and e-business, backed by a team of over 3000 technologists and one of the world's largest communications research and development facilities. Brightstar is BTexact Technologies corporate technology incubator set up to help analyse and develop new business ideas into seed investments and to negotiate first round deals with venture capital firms. All Brightstar ventures are expected to have a minimum market capitalization of £100 million within the next three years. Further information David Pincott / Lis Walton, Pirate Communications tel: +44 20 7760 7052/7054 david@piratecomms.com / lis@piratecomms.com Phone companies estimate that global telecommunications fraud is running at $55 billion a year. The estimates come from telecoms industry group the International Forum of Irregular Network Access (FIINA), whose members include fraud experts at service providers throughout the world. www.fiina.org ------------------------------------------------------------ This information was brought to you by Waymaker http://www.waymaker.net The following files are available for download: http://www.waymaker.net/bitonline/2002/03/05/20020305BIT01180/wkr0001.doc http://www.waymaker.net/bitonline/2002/03/05/20020305BIT01180/wkr0002.pdf