Can you afford to be without Call Logging? – What about fraud?

Many people believe that if they are not charging back the costs to departments they no longer need the call logger, but there many more circumstances that require both a historical and current view of you telecommunication platforms.

Fraud is the most obvious use for a call logger as you would want to know when the fraud is actually happening, rather than receiving a large bill at the end of the month. The call logger will be able to watch for excessive use and charges in the background even if you don’t use the reports.

External fraud detection usually starts with people repeatedly calling into you automated services looking for a vulnerability that gives them more access than there should be. Historically, they are looking for a route through your system that will allow them to call an external number. This number will be a premium rate service, which they own and they will gain profit from these calls, when connected. Once they have found this route, they will flood your phone systems with multiple calls, which can easily cost you tens of thousands of pounds per day. Without a Call Logger it is a race against time for damage limitation with many people unaware of the route that was even used for the fraudulent exploit.

Detecting this must be done as a real time process as every second can count. Usually this is done as multiple independent checks on the call logger, such as detecting when excessive inbound calls are routing to your automated systems (IVR, voicemail, etc.) or inbound calls that are not routed to a valid destination. Additional checks for outbound calls are also done, such as excessive call charges that are routed externally or when excessive call charges are routed internationally. By having multiple checks that alert you to a possible intrusion, it will give you the best chance of detecting and preventing fraud before it happens or give you a quick indication of when it does, but before the dreaded phone bill arrives.

Fraud is not limited to external parties and can happen internally as well. Again real time notifications are the best method for detecting this and preventing this from happening. Historically we have seen this from an extension setup by an engineer to run his own company while working for a customer, night staff abusing the systems by spending multiple hours to international call destinations or poorly setup call forwards on extensions that allow external parties to have elevated external access.

While the call logger will not block these from happening, having advanced warning of these being attempted will likely save tens of thousands and the ability to set up ‘what if’ scenarios in real-time allow you to know what is happening quickly.

If, when reading this, you would like these reports or real-time screens, please don’t hesitate to call us (+44 (0) 1442 20 00 00) or email us (support@focom.com).