Cloud-based communications platforms continue to gain popularity amongst enterprises, with service providers offering attractive cost reductions and flexibility, supporting businesses to scale. However, as a comparatively new infrastructure, cloud communications are falling victim to sophisticated fraud methods, with cases relating to the misuse of communications services such as cloud-based numbers on the rise. In order to continuously monitor fraudulent numbers and provide full business visibility, a proactive and comprehensive solution is needed to protect against fraud and fraud-related revenue loss.
The telecoms fraud environment is evolving, and so are the criminals that target it. Fraudsters now operate on a global scale, adopting new technologies and approaches to target organizations. While the number of reported individual attacks has declined,
recent statistics show a steady increase in fraud impacting new communications platforms, with a 60% rise year-on-year in 2018. There are several reasons for this: a lack of proactive monitoring, reduced knowledge, and decreased visibility due to disparate business units. International traffic has also become increasingly difficult to protect and secure, with different geography-based regulations and restrictions to consider. Combined, these factors provide the perfect environment for fraudsters to exploit.
In addition, many service providers offering cloud-based numbers don’t have access to the global historical data needed to proactively combat fraud in the most effective way. Conferencing services that utilize cloud-based numbers are also being exploited over longer periods of time due to a lack of fraud monitoring, enabling high volumes of fraudulent traffic to be passed over their infrastructure, resulting in huge financial implications. A clear end-to-end view is needed to provide clear visibility across any operational silos, allowing service providers to know exactly where their cloud numbers are being utilized by the wider team and the end user.
For organizations looking to deploy winning strategies to protect against cloud comms fraud, the answer sits with traditional telcos – collaborating with them to leverage their sector knowledge and expertise – taking a dedicated and proactive approach to fraud prevention. With years of experience, telcos can monitor cloud numbers 24x7, identifying fraudulent activity before it can have a devastating effect on businesses.
BICS’ FraudGuard solution uses a collaborative crowdsourced platform to enable simpler detection and proactive prevention of fraud, pre-emptively blocking known fraudulent numbers before they can impact service providers and their customers. If you’re a multinational, multi-site organization that requires unified communications or you want to overhaul your fraud protection strategy, then download our recent white paper
here, discussing the importance of a proactive strategy when combatting cloud comms fraud.
