Telecom Expense Management - Preventing Phone Fraud

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Call accounting solutions or telecom expense management systems have a major role in the detection of telephone fraud. Historically they were simply used as reporting tools to assist in the post mortem. They were not very effective at either preventing fraud or identifying those responsible. Current generation call management software is far more proactive. It can detect telephone fraud in real time and broadcast alerts via email, screen pop, text ... to nominated personnel while the event is in progress.

Phone fraud costs business billions of dollars annually and there is every reason to expect the trend to continue. While the business world has been sensitized to the threat of computer fraud, there is widespread apathy about threats emanating from business phone systems.

The definition of phone fraud is much broader than it used to be. VoIP call accounting systems are not only required to identify employees who make unauthorized long distance calls to relatives and friends from work, but to also detect attempts to access computer systems via the phone system.

A key selling feature of even the smallest business phone system is that it can be networked with everything else in the office. Most if not all VoIP PBX solutions are based on a standard PC server configured with either Open Source or proprietary VoIP PBX software. They connect to the Internet for the purpose of transmitting both voice and data along the same circuit. The PBX act as a hub for all forms of business communication including: email, text messages, voice mail, web access, mobile devices, wireless and also voice.

Ironically, while most of us would not consider connecting a PC to the Internet without a firewall and anti-virus software the same caution apparently does not apply to the installation of an IP PBX. It is ironic because the exposure is in fact probably greater.

It is for these reasons that the role of PBX call accounting software has changed significantly in the transition from TDM to IP technology. In the past voice and data communication rarely touched one another. Today cohabitation is the norm. They are comprehensively entangled within packets that share the same LAN and WAN as the PBX and IT servers.

In the transition from analogue to digital and from PSTN to IP the business phone system has become a far more useful piece of technology but it's also more vulnerable than widely appreciated. One reason for this is that few businesses want to attract attention to themselves for the wrong reasons. Banks and financial institutions rarely put out press releases advising that they have been the target of a successful fraud attack. It can potentially damage both business confidence and reputations.

In response to these concerns most if not all major financial institutions regularly upgrade their telecom expense management systems.

Telephone Call Accounting - Fraud Prevention Tool

Fortunately the answer to the challenge of phone fraud can also be found in the same IP technology that was responsible for taking the lid of this Pandora's box. Historically call accounting software was used to identify incidents of telephone abuse and misuse. The software was used to produce periodic reports that would list out of hours calls, calls to competitors, headhunters and friends or family. These systems were reactive and only useful for post mortem analysis after the event. The focus was on managing the use of telephones by employees, eliminating personal use, increasing productivity and containing costs.

Modern telecom expense management software has a much wider brief than monitoring internal use of phone systems by employees. It's required to detect all forms of fraud in real time and alert administrators while offenses are still in progress. The software continuously examines both in-bound and out-bound call detail records for patterns, events and the breaching of thresholds. When these trigger points are encountered alerts are immediately sent to network managers by text message, email, telephone call or screen pop. The objective is to prevent fraud and breaches of security from happening as well as to identify those responsible.

Web based call accounting systems facilitate monitoring as they can be accessed from anywhere at any time.

Symptoms of phone fraud that trigger the attention telecom expense management software include:

• Calls to maintenance ports
• Direct Inward System Access calls
• Call forwarding
• Calls to unexpected and unusual destinations
• Calls to and from numbers associated with competitors, head hunters, past employees ...
• Out of hours calls
• War dialing - large volumes of in-bound short duration calls
• Network breakout calls - trunk to trunk
• Calls that exceed thresholds: duration, cost or volume

As cases of phone fraud become more common expect to see a resurgence in the use of telecom expense management systems.

See also: Free Call Accounting Software - is it worth it? and

Call Accounting Systems - the business case

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