Recently in Fraud Management Category

Sun Tzu’s strategies talk about:

“If the enemy leaves a door open, you must rush in”

The same theories appear to be in practice for modern VoIP fraudsters… If companies and carriers are going to cut back on network security spending and staff, fraudsters are going to take advantage…  Kelly Teal has a look at a recent Infonetics research report.

In my opinion, these situations will continue since many telecom service providers feel probably a little TOO comfortable with their fraud management platforms and how much of the fraud perpetrated on their networks.  This false sense of security comes from complacency and a lack of imagination on what fraudsters will attack and how can they can utilize those “open doors”…

Do you agree that fraud organizations may becoming complacent?

Post your comments below or email (John.Myers@BlueBuffaloGroup.com) / twitter (JohnLMyers44) me directly.

At a recent risk conference, Apple’s Dave Moriarty talked about how waiting for chargebacks is not an efficient strategy for dealing with fraud issues with online purchases.  As more and more online purchase are being made via, on and for mobile devices; I am in “violent agreement” with him. 

In fact, I would go so far as to say that it’s not just issues of fraud that can be tracked with with the “leading” indicator of cancelled orders, but revenue assurance as well.

Being able to track not only the subscription and service orders, but premium service or mobile application orders for provisioning and cancellation are excellent methods to identify problem products and services.  While you cannot eliminate fraud and revenue assurance issues using this type of order analytics, you can understand where issues will come from and help to build controls into those products either in advance or adjustment to meet fraud and revenue assurance issues.

Where do you think the future of order analytics is going?

Post your comments below or email (John.Myers@BlueBuffaloGroup.com) / twitter (JohnLMyers44) me directly.

Let's give props where they are due.... Bryan Sartin and his investigations team over at Verizon Business got a great note in the press last week relating to data theft.

No........ it wasn't Sartin's team who lost the data.... In this case Sartin's team helps organizations to identify where and how data thefts take place. In these instances, the network often isn't the problem. The problem is how the data is handled by 3rd party IT support vendors and physical security agents.

I think the reminder that data theft crime / fraud isn't always a high tech enterprise. It can be as low tech as paying for an Excel spreadsheet with customer information in it.

Technorati Tags: Telecommunications, Telecom, Verizon, Bryan Sartin, Data Theft, Fraud

The TDWI Conference in Orlando this week features a slightly different theme. Rather than strictly technical data quality the topic was overall leadership in the area of data governance. This difference in theme brought out “new blood” in terms of attendees and vendor/sponsors.

Many of these attendees and vendors are focusing their energy on the business, or contextual, aspects of data governance rather than just the technical, or syntax related aspects that have been traditionally a part of data quality. This manifests itself in areas like master data management (MDM) for customer relationship management as a part of integrated marketing efforts; revenue assurance as part of revenue management; or route optimization as part of an operations research segment of cost management.

This focus, on assessing the business value of an organization’s data in addition to its technical consistency, is showing the maturity of data professionals and their place in the organization. This is similar to my "Needles in the Haystack" posting earlier this month.

Technorati Tags: Telecommunications, Telecom, TDWI, Operations, Master Data Management, MDM, Revenue Assurance, Route Optimization, Data Governance

This week the CFCA is holding their latest telecommunications fraud educational event. If you wanted to encapsulate the "motto" of the ever growing and dispersed population of fraudsters targeting the telecom industry, it might be the following:

"You can be sure of succeeding in your attacks if you only attack places which are undefended."

And the message for the security professionals, who are in attendance tasked with thwarting those fraudsters, could be described as:

"We also know there are "known unknowns"; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also "unknown unknowns" — the ones we don't know we don't know."

Yes, yes. It might not be the best to use Donald Rumsfeld against the strategic master of Sun Tzu. But the concept is that the CFCA brings to light through these events is to think outside the box to find the "unknown unknowns" because that exactly where fraudsters will make their "undefended attacks". When a telecom fraud or security organization can do that, they will have mastered half the battle in fighting fraud.

If you are one of those fraud or security professionals, I would recommend making plans for any of the upcoming CFCA events.

Technorati Tags: Telecommunications, Telecom, Fraud, CFCA, Sun Tzu, Donald Rumsfeld