Not just talk – DT actively combats voice fraud
Interview Robert Teichmueller, Head of Fraud Management at Deutsche Telekom ICSS
Voice fraud costs the industry billions of dollars every year. Find out what Deutsche Telekom is doing to help stop abuse in this interview with Robert Teichmueller.
Q: Just how big is the fraud problem for Deutsche Telekom’s business?
A: Fraud in the voice area is a huge problem, not just for us but for the entire telco industry, with studies estimating losses amounting to over 29,2 billion dollars last year. In an already challenging market, fraud can be a make-or-break situation for many providers.
Q: Where do you see the biggest threat?
A: The most serious threat we perceive – and this has also been acknowledged through a 2015 study from the Communications Fraud Control Association – is in the international voice traffic area and particularly with PBX systems (Private Branch Exchange). That’s because these business or private systems are often not very well protected, making them easy targets.
Q: What is Deutsche Telekom doing to combat these fraudsters?
A: Stopping fraud is one of our main focuses at Deutsche Telekom. That’s why we’ve implemented a 24/7 fraud monitoring system. It automatically screens all international traffic and immediately takes action when anomalies or suspicious traffic streams have been identified. Besides that, we have a dedicated fraud management team that is continually watching out for more sophisticated fraud scenarios.
As I said, we take fraud very seriously, because it is extremely damaging to the entire industry and of course to the end customer. We believe the only way to fight fraud is for everyone in the industry to get involved and work together to share knowledge and solutions. To that end we are one of the leading members of the i3 Forum, which is a non-profit organization that was created to fight fraud.
Q: The criminal element seems to always find new ways to get around even the best solutions – how do you keep up?
A: It is true that fraudsters are always coming up with new plans to carry out their attacks. That’s why we’re always investigating new technologies to cope with these threats and put stopgaps in place before they even start. For example, we’re using big data and artificial intelligence to automatically detect fraud more quickly – and we’re extremely effective at what we do. Every year we screen 24 billion minutes, and identify and stop more than 2500 cases of fraud. That is a truly impressive success rate and underscores our ability and our dedication to fight voice fraud.
Related link:
Voice Protection