Similarly, in GSM networks, operators are challenged to recover this lost revenue as they often don’t know it’s missing until it is gone and irretrievable.
With GSM devices, the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) has proven the preferred gateway of attack. International Revenue Share Fraud (IRSF) involves the cloning and resale of copied SIM cards by organized criminal organizations and can be very costly for affected operators. Fraudster knowledge of the network also allows them to hijack customer connections in order to make multiple calls to “revenue share” numbers, which are usually premium rate numbers. Or they also may
hijack country code numbers to re-route them via different locations. These types of fraud happen most often across the borders between very rich and very poor countries.
GSM-based operators have options to improve barriers against this sort of fraud, which most often is an international fraud problem rather than a domestic one. One way is with Syniverse DataNet, a solution that assures compliance to the Near Real Time Roaming Data Exchange (NRTDRE) standard recently developed by the GSMA. NRTRDE is designed to close the window of opportunity for fraudsters by reducing the time it takes to exchange call data records (CDR) that detail roaming service usage between the visited (roaming) and home operator networks from 36 hours to just 4 hours or less.
After receiving roaming CDRs from roaming partners, we sort them, translate them into the required fraud management system format and route them back in near realtime, speeding the fraud detection process and allowing operators to more quickly access the information they need to make decisions that protect their bottom lines. If the visited operator is unable to get this information to the home operator in time, the visited operator is held liable for any fraud associated with those calls, and so there’s defi nitely an incentive for operators to work together on standards compliance.
We expect the adoption of the new standard to reduce the incidence of roaming fraud by up to 90 percent. Syniverse is currently implementing more than 40 Syniverse DataNet contracts around the globe through experienced teams in local offices who understand the regional challenges to implementation as well as the regional variations to IRSF.
We are not the only ones who believe roaming fraud is something to which operators should pay attention. Analysts also agree it is a signifi cant problem. “Roaming fraud is a very real and present danger for operators the world over, and it is impacting their bottom lines,” says Martina Kurth, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner Group. “Any initiative that enables operators to minimize roaming fraud is, therefore, a strategic business issue on which operators must act if there is not to be further erosion into their profitability.”
