Understanding Dial Through Telephone Fraud and what to do about it.

How can it be prevented?

There are some simple and practical steps that can be taken to reduce the likelihood of dial-through fraud, such as securing the remote administration access. However much you try, you are up against an extremely sophisticated foe whose whole livelihood depends on successfully attacking companies such as yours. You need a strategy to both limit your exposure to dial-through fraud and then detect it as soon as possible if it should occur.

You can use a traditional Call Management System such as Eclipse CMS to run reports looking for fraudulent activity. How long after the event would it take you to discover that you have a problem? You could just wait for the carrier bill to arrive, but that could be a very expensive way of finding out. One very proactive way of combating dial-through fraud is to invest in either the SwitchGuard module for the Eclipse Call Management system or a Tracker solution from Data Track.

Using SwitchGuard

Guarding against dial-through fraud and ensuring that your telephone system or network is performing correctly has traditionally meant wading through piles of call management reports trying to spot abnormalities or problems; this can be some time after the event occurred. No longer; SwitchGuard can do all this work for you.

SwitchGuard analyses calls in real time, 24 hours a day looking for dial-through fraud. It will tell you when you have a problem and where to look to fix it. Alarms can be sent as ASCII text or SNMP trap to any number of locations by IP, dial up, e-mail or SMS, direct to the Eclipse Alarm Management System (AMS) or a corporate system such as HP OpenView.

SwitchGuard can be programmed to detect a whole variety of different calls and calling patterns by time of day, day of week and rate of occurrence. Examples include:

SwitchGuard can be used on most popular telephone systems including Alcatel, Avaya, Cisco, Ericsson, Mitel, Nortel, Phillips, Samsung, Siemens and Toshiba. It works with both IP and legacy systems.

Using a Tracker Solution

The Tracker solution can proactively monitor the call data (CDR) output from the PBX. It can be set to look for suspicious call activity. When suspicious activity is detected, the Tracker will send out an alert containing the details. This allows an appropriate response to be taken, reducing the potential losses caused by the fraud. Alarms can be sent as ASCII text or SNMP trap to one or two locations by IP or dial up communications, either direct to the Eclipse Alarm Management System (AMS) or a corporate system such as HP OpenView.

Dial-through telephone fraud can very quickly and silently cause thousands of pounds worth of losses to a business. Hackers use sophisticated methods of attack. Standard security precautions can reduce the exposure to fraud but they are not totally foolproof. Trying to recover any loss is as difficult as detecting the fraud in the first instance. A solution from Data Track will help you pro actively monitor your system and reduce your risk.

Want to understand more about Voice Fraud?

Already have Tracker solution or Eclipse CMS from Data Track? You can order your SwitchGuard module.