What inspires you to clamp down on fraud?

It’s the thrill of the cat and mouse game that keeps me motivated in this industry.  As technology thrives, fraudsters constantly seek new ways to bypass the system and it’s up to us to be a step ahead by pre-empting new fraud scenarios and ways to prevent them from materialising or reacting quickly to the needs of our customers by providing innovative tools. It is a constantly changing environment which keeps you on your toes.

Right now, what do you think is the biggest fraud threat MNOs are facing?

First we need to take a look at the difference between commercial fraud such as subscription fraud and handset theft and technology fraud which requires tampering with network elements to some extent. Due to the implementation of fraud management systems, operators are learning to contain the problems posed by commercial fraud and to pre-empt the onset of new types of fraud in this area.

Personally, I think the biggest threat MNOs are facing right now lies in the domain of technology fraud. Experience at HAUD Systems has shown us that operators are still falling victim to both international revenue share fraud and revenue leakage through grey route traffic.

If we translate fraud prevention into financial figures, what exactly are operators looking at in terms of potential revenue?

I can safely say that operators could realistically increase revenues from interworking at international level and interconnection at a local level by about 20%. In some cases, however, we have seen that recuperating revenue leakage can reach the 50% mark.

But these are estimates based on our findings through collaboration with various operators.  At HAUD Systems we offer traffic profiling which provides a detailed, network specific analysis of the extent of revenue leakage in a given network.  We encourage MNOs to take advantage of this commitment-free exercise to get a truthful picture of what is happening on their network and how this information can be monetised and revenue leakage turned into revenue assurance.

Since you are a lawyer by profession, do you think that current legislation is sufficient to protect operators and subscribers from the dangers of fraud and spam? 

As a lawyer with 13 years’ experience in the telecoms regulatory arena, I believe that the most successful legal frameworks are those which provide clear guidelines on the obligation of operators to clamp down on spam and fraud.

Having said this, regulators, on the other hand, should be wary against being too specific on the methodology for achieving such end goals. This may have the knock-on effect of placing operators in a “strait-jacket” that restrict both operators and vendors alike from coming up with future-proof solutions.

What’s your outlook for HAUD for the next 6 months?   

The forecast for the next 6 months is full systems go! We are currently deploying our SMS firewall in various networks around the globe whilst still developing further features and tools for the product itself which we plan to launch in early 2015 so continue to follow us for the latest product launches.

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