2017
How can CSP’s Limit Fraud in their Networks?
Communication Service Providers (CSP’s) face many challenges in today’s competitive voice services market and fraud is one of the bigger challenges. CSPs operating without the proper logging, reporting or access controls can unwittingly let fraud erode their profitability to the point where it forces them into bankruptcy.
Fraud is costly to the operator in terms of the financial impact it places on a business that operates on razor thin margins, in terms of the burden it places on administrative and technical resources to investigate and correct the breach, and in terms of the impact it has to the provider’s reputation, credibility and confidence with its customers.
In trying to mitigate the risk of fraud a CSP can sometimes over-engineer controls to address the fraud that have a collateral impact to the customer experience through additional access controls and/or authentication steps that increase user frustration and delay.
Whether the CSP is providing services to enterprises through a PBX, via OTT clients direct to the consumer, through SIM cards, or to residential Voice over Broadband (VoBB) subscribers there are ways to secure the service and cap fraud exposure, such as:
- Use SIP credentials or other trusted value (e.g. P-Asserted-Identity or Remote-Party-ID) for authentication instead of relying on ANI for calls that transit over the public Internet.
- Implement a Session Border Controller.
- Add a secondary authentication measure, such as a PIN, before allowing outbound dialing.
- Automatically block subscribers based on failed authentications either permanently or for a set period of time.
- Deny brute force authentication attempts.
- Implement real-time billing so that a prepaid balance and/or a credit limit can be used to limit exposure.
- Use parent/child account relationships and/or usage controls to limit consumption.
- Block access to/from certain known problematic countries.
- Use reporting and charting tools to plot and monitor customer access and usage patterns to be able to better detect anomalous behavior.
For over a decade, IVR Technologies has been helping CSPs worldwide implement revenue generating services with robust authentication and real-time billing capabilities that drive revenue, improve profitability, limit fraud and build subscriber loyalty.
To learn more about our Talking SIP solution or for a complimentary technical consultation please contact sales@ivr.com
