Some Key Facts About Communications Fraud

According to a recent study from the Communications Fraud Control Association (CFCA), a high number of Communication Service Providers are increasingly facing fraud attacks. Based on the results of the CFCA’s “2011 Global Fraud Loss Survey”, the annual Global Fraud Loss Estimate reportedly is $40.1 Billion (USD), whereas the real number is probably much higher.

The CFCA which is a not-for-profit global educational association with mission to combat communications fraud, describes the 5 most current fraud types as follows:

• $4.96Billion–Compromised PBX/Voicemail systems
• $4.32Billion–Subscription/Identity (ID)Theft
• $3.84Billion–International Revenue Share Fraud (IRSF)
• $2.88Billion–Bypass Fraud
• $2.40Billion–Credit Card Fraud

However, there are many other existing fraud types such as Identity Theft, Social Engineering, Roaming Fraud, SS7 Manipulation just to name a few.

When asked how many fraud incidents the surveyed telecom operators handle per month, 42.6% said less than 50 incidents, 13% report to have had 51-100 incidents, 24.1% (101-500 incidents), 3.7% (501-1,000 incidents) and 16.7% (1,001+ incidents).

With the migration to Next Generation Networks, the risk of new fraud attack methods keeps on growing and the need to protect these networks becomes an obvious necessity for network operators. Current available solutions to fight telecom fraud might still be limited, but to prevent fraud attacks efficiently, you might need a solution that runs in real-time to detect fraud incidents instantly, with a powerful technology to prevent any fraud attack on IMS, LTE and VoIP networks.

Source: all provided numbers and facts are based on the CFCA’s “2011 Global Fraud Loss Survey”.

For more information about the Communications Fraud Control Association, please contact fraud@cfca.org or visit the official website: www.cfca.org