Understanding the Threat: Telecom Fraud
Many individuals are familiar with cybercrime like ransomware or identify theft; however, a large majority of scams against enterprises are instances of telecom fraud. For the year 2020 - telecom fraud cost customers approximately $34.1 million (total reported loss, source: FTC Trends Over Time).
Telecom fraud awareness is especially relevant in 2022 as much of the workforce has been operating in remote or hybrid deployments. With many companies extending the length of time they plan to be remote, they are also revisiting security training for their teams in an increasingly digital landscape. Telecom security should be part of this discussion, so employees have the awareness and tools necessary to protect themselves against cybercriminals.
To help companies avoid falling prey to fraudsters, we’ve outlined a few common telecom fraud types.
Types of Telecom Fraud
Types of preventive measures to consider
An important element when dealing with fraud is having a plan in place for when fraud does occur. Companies must ensure their employees know what to do to report malicious activity or fraudulent bills in a timely manner. There is also representation from law enforcement on that weekly call. So, if calls are identified that continue to trace back to the same bad actor, law enforcement is given all the information needed to subpoena the bad actor.
Important: If there is a violation that is autodetected by our system, an email goes out to customers requesting them to verify whether the traffic is legitimate.
The customers then receive a link and are taken to their customer portal where they can easily report whether the activity was legitimate.
Further reading
[External] Telecom fraud prevention guide