A growing problem within the industry is that of unauthorised calls being made by third parties via “business communications”, a practice commonly referred to as “Hacking” or “Phreaking”. The risk of phone hacking is extremely low – however, these incidents can result in extremely high costs. In such cases many of the calls made are to Premium Rate and International numbers which are much more expensive than local and national calls.
As a responsible telecoms provider, we already use the latest technology available to us to protect our customers and over the last 12 months we have saved our customers thousands of pounds for which they would otherwise have been liable for toll fraud.
Datasharp E-Alerts allow you to set up automatic alerts of calls that you would like to be notified about. An email is automatically sent to you when a call is made that matches the criteria selected so the fraud can be detected at the earliest stage.
Developing ways to identify phone hacking earlier
We are working to improve on our processes even further so that we can identify any toll fraud at a much earlier stage than current products available allow. To do this we are liaising with our Industry Partners to identify the issues, pool resources, collect data and work together to provide a solution which would allow Datasharp UK to identify potential fraud within a much shorter timeframe.
Datasharp is at the forefront of industry development to limit toll fraud and is driving the agenda with our partners. We take the problem of phone hacking so seriously that we are investing in these systems and their development and do not pass any of the costs onto our customers and provide all toll fraud monitoring free of charge.
Reduce the threat of Phone Hacking
As well as making constant improvements to the security of telephone systems we advise all of our customers to take the following actions to minimise the risk of phone hacking to their business:
- Ensure that your system is programmed with Call Barring for non-essential Premium Rate and International numbers.
- Ensure that all users with voicemail change their access password rather than leaving them at the default manufacturer settings.
- For those of you who benefit from having your calls and lines with Datasharp Network Services we would recommend that you use the “E-Alert” facility to alert you of unusual call patterns.
- Ensure all passwords used to register IP Communication devices adhere to strict security policies also ensure all management software for either systems or individual users adhere to the same strict policies.
- For those who do not have such access to E-Alerts we recommend you contact Datasharp UK to discuss the options available to you. We will be able to explain further products such as Call Logging software which will help you to keep an eye on all calls being made.
- It is advisable to view your online billing on a regular basis as this will highlight immediately any irregularities in your call traffic.
