Written by Telecoms fraud is real, fraudsters take many millions of pounds a year from poorly defended UK companies. Robin gives his 5 top tips to ensure your organisation is protected.
Since being in telecoms since 1992 I have seen many frauds and scams where end users have lost many thousands of pounds. Here are my top five tips on how to ensure your organisation is protected.
1. Secure your router / firewall
Ensure you have your router / firewall that is fit for purpose and ports are properly locked down. Make sure it is properly maintained. Do you have remote monitoring and is its software and firmware up to date? At workflow we monitor our client’s equipment and ensure it is as secure as is possible.
2. Ensure your system software is fully up to date
This includes any apps. Most telecoms manufacturers bring out one or two major software releases each year, and these releases heavily focus on fraud prevention.
3. Double check your system call barring is fit for purpose.
This will prevent many premium rate or international call frauds where either an exernal party or a disgruntled employee makes multiple calls to shockingly expensive numbers.
4. Double check your network call barring is fit for purpose.
Many networks offer call barring and this is probably more important than system call barring as we have seen hackers bypass system call barring. Do you need to dial international calls at all? Do you need to have access to international premium rate calls?
5. Discuss with your telecoms line provider daily call limits.
Many networks allow these cost call limits for calls outside your free of charge call bundle. You can have an alert set if you get to a predefined daily call cost and then a bar on any more chargeable calls if you reach the daily limit.