IN recent months there's been a considerable increase in the number of telephony fraud incidences reported in Northern Ireland.
The cost of this type of fraud is solely the responsibility of the end user, your business, and not your telecom provider.
There are simple steps you can take to minimise this risks, but unfortunately as witnessed recently by the White House, there is no fool proof method to protect a system as hackers??? methods are becoming increasingly sophisticated.
Telephony fraud is when hackers use different kinds of scams to ???steal??? access to the telephone system thereby causing irreparable damage, compromising both the business and its revenues. They generally use the business lines to route international and premium rate calls which generate them income and the business a large bill.
It is a serious, costly issue for businesses. This type of fraud is on the rise and can unexpectedly leave organisations with thousands to pay on their telephony bill.
The telecoms industry takes any type of fraud extremely seriously and has invested significant time and resources into early detection and prevention. However, the continued increase in telephony fraud highlights the fact that many small to medium sized businesses that operate their own office telephone exchanges are not securing their systems against the activities of hackers. Businesses that remain unaware of telephony fraud or fail to secure their equipment run the risk of it happening to them and paying the inevitable financial consequences.
There are a number of steps businesses can take to reduce the risk of telephony fraud happening, but if you have any doubts or concerns speak to your telephone system maintainer, urgently.
At a minimum you should bar all unnecessary call destinations including international call locations your business would have absolutely no reason to connect with as you go about your day to day business and premium rate numbers starting 087 and 09 as well as the extensions you don???t use.
Also, remove all default passwords and limit access to maintenance ports; change passwords and access codes regularly and make them longer. Do not use common codes such as 1234 or 0000; review any DISA settings and control/deactivate ??? this stops employees dialling in to make outbound calls via your telephony system; block access to unallocated mailboxes and change default PINs on unused boxes; ensure you fully understand your system functionality and capabilities and restrict access to facilities you do not use; regularly review call usage via your bill to identify unusual occurrences; and be vigilant for evidence of hacking, if you cannot obtain an out-going line, this is a good sign your system is compromised and frequently check call logs for out of hours periods.
While businesses may already be aware of telephony fraud, a lot will probably think that it won???t happen to them, but unfortunately the instances of telephony fraud are on the increase so act now to stop it costing your business later.
:: Eric Carson is director of Rainbow Communications and can be contacted via www.rainbowcomms.com. Rainbow Communications can also be followed on Twitter - @Rainbow_Comms.
