According to the Communications Fraud Control Association, telecoms fraud caused approximately $29.2 billion in fraudulent charges last year alone of which over $3.8 billion in financial losses was attributed to various types of PBX hacking and toll fraud on enterprise communications networks.
“There is a clear and definite need for our new telecoms fraud protection service,” stated Arnd Baranowski, CEO of Oculeus. “In many places, the burden of proving and even paying for the false charges resulting from telecoms fraud are on the enterprise and relying solely on the telco for protection is not sufficient.”
Oculeus-Protect is a real-time telecoms fraud protection service that provides enterprises an intelligent and automated framework to efficiently prevent false charges resulting from unauthorized usage of enterprise telecommunication channels by cybercriminals and other perpetrators of telecom fraud. The service can block fraudulent telecommunications traffic within milliseconds and is completely independent of an enterprise’s telecommunications service provider and its telecoms fraud prevention efforts.
The service runs from regional Cloud environments launched by the company and is now available throughout Europe, North America and South America and will be available in other regions in mid-January 2019.
Oculeus-Protect is accessible through a quick and straightforward registration process. During this process, the enterprise’s PBX systems is registered and configured so that the signaling flows of calls are monitored. After this registration and configuration is completed, the Oculeus service immediately protects the enterprise’s voice communications against PBX hacking and toll fraud without any impact on the quality of the calls.
“Our service runs like an antivirus system on a laptop with no noticeable impact on the speed or quality of the enterprise’s existing voice communications,” added Baranowski. “Any suspicious calls from outside the enterprise are detected immediately and those confirmed to be fraudulent are instantly blocked.”
The technology behind Oculeus’ service begins providing protection by profiling the enterprise’s communications network and building a baseline of expected telecommunications activities. The technology then continuously monitors the enterprise’s communications network for traffic anomalies and other patterns that are typical of telecoms fraud. Any suspicious traffic is immediately sent to a fraud detection engine, which is also located in Oculeus’ Cloud environment, and if confirmed to be fraudulent, is blocked instantly.
“Defense-in-depth is a wise practice considering today’s threat-rich digital world. In countries like the US, the enterprise is actually financially responsible when fraudsters highjack your PBX and dial up a $40,000 bill over a weekend,” said Dan Baker, Director of Technology Research Institute, a market research firm that follows the fraud control software market. “In a simple and transparent way to achieve defense-in-depth, the new Oculeus service provides very affordable insurance at the same annual cost of protecting two PCs with antivirus software.”
Enterprises registering for this service also have online access to an individual portal illustrating the state of the telecoms fraud protection activities as well as a range of reports detailing the enterprise’s voice communications activities.
Oculeus is offering this new service based on a monthly fee and is priced according the number of PBX devices that are protected.