The UK is the third most targeted country in the world for telephony fraud and telephone hacking. Fraudsters hack into your PBX or hosted telephony, normally out of office hours, and gain access to your phone system in seconds. They use advanced software packages to crack pass codes and bypass firewalls.
Once inside your system, hackers use it to route unauthorised and illegal calls to any location in the world. The stolen call time is sold on as legitimate call time in the form of calling cards and low-priced calling tariffs. In almost all cases there is a link to organised criminal gangs purporting to be legitimate businesses.
- Telephony fraud accounts for worldwide business losses of over £30 billion.
- The United Kingdom is the third most targeted country in the world.
- Telephony fraud in the UK costs businesses £1.2 billion each year.
- Average cost of a UK attack estimated at £10,000
- 89% of ALL operators surveyed said that fraud losses had increased or stayed the same
- Telephony Fraud is damaging & can sometimes be fatal for a business
Kube are continually working on new ways to identify and combat this growing crime and do what we can to help reduce our customer’s exposure to this significant risk. Along with fraud monitoring our team put our customers security at the core of everything we do.
Here’s some Steps & Tips To Prevent PBX & Hosted Telephony Fraud
- If you do not call internationally, ensure a restriction or lock down is placed on these types of calls.
- Remove & change all default password settings and limit access to any maintenance ports immediately
- Change passwords and access codes regularly and create stronger and longer passwords using both alpha and numeric. Avoid 000, 1234 and extension numbers.
- Analyse your bills frequently & ensure your business can account for itemized calls.
- Crosscheck calls to international countries & ensure they are to countries you recognise.
- Consider limiting call types by extension. If a user has no requirement to call international or premium rate numbers (PRS) then bar access.
- Use strong passwords for your voicemail systems, change them regularly
- Review call logging and call reporting.
- Look out for suspect call traffic.
- Secure the system physically – site it in a secure communications room and restrict access to that area.
- Ensure your PBX provider fully understands the risks of PBX fraud.
- Review any DISA (Direct Inwards System Access) settings and control or deactivate – this is typically used to allow employees to dial in from home to make outbound calls (usually high value call types – mobile and international in particular) via the company PBX .
- Ensure you fully understand your systems functionality and capabilities and restrict access to those services which you do not use.
- Assess security of all PBX & Hosted Telephony peripherals and applications: platform, operating system, password and permissions scheme and always evaluate the security of remote management tools (e.g. PC Anywhere).
- Importantly, be vigilant for evidence of hacking the threat is both internal & external, some signs include
- Not being able to obtain an outbound line is a good indicator of high volumes of traffic through your system, if this happens contact your provider immediately.
- Check for calls outside of business hours.
Learn More On How To Protect Your Business
Nobody likes to be ripped off and that’s why Kube’s Fraud Prevention Monitoring features are designed to help protect you stop fraudulent activity on your lines. Features include monitoring your traffic and ensure that any suspicious traffic is highlighted and if required locked down to prevent potentially thousands of pounds’ worth of calls.
Speak to one of the Kube Team today to learn how to protect your business against fraud, we are experts in the field of Unified Communications, give us a call on 0344 873 4488 or email sales@www.kubenet.net
