Another article which has caught our eye this month was a piece on a suspected global telecom hacking campaign.
US cyber security vendor Cybereason, say that they first spotted concerning trends last year as they investigated suspicious activity on one of their customer’s networks. It is thought that perhaps as many as 10 global networks may have been involved in multiple and ongoing cyber intrusions going back as far as 2017. The main activity seems to centre around accessing mobile telephone networks and pulling down their calling data records and other sensitive information. It is estimated that the records of 100’s of millions of users may well have been taken. The reason this is worrying is that these records provide a fairly detailed account of an individual’s activities, geographical and possibly even geolocation information.
Cybereason are pointing their finger firmly in the direction of the Chinese state, calling this a government sponsored espionage initiative. All very interesting stuff given recent US and wider global concerns around the activities of the Huawei Corporation. “The plot thickens” as the saying goes!
Cyber-Fraud, or what used to be called ‘Toll Fraud’ in the telecoms industry is a massive global concern. This is where criminals hack into your telephone system and then use this as a calling gateway from which they can make massive financial gain, at your expense. Did you know that Cyber-Telecoms fraud has been recently estimated as $32.7bn annual global problem. To be fair, the figures do vary year on year between $12bn and $40bn depending on which report you read – but nonetheless even at $12bn this is bigger than credit card fraud!
To help combat this, Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre created the CyTel working group in 2018, bringing together more than 60 experts from law agencies and the global telecommunications industry to share intelligence, knowledge and experience. Many of the methods for accessing client and operator networks have been detailed in the recent Europol Cyber-Telecom Crime 2019 report.
Evoke Telecom’s ‘Call to Action’
But, don’t worry, there are many steps that you can take to secure or protect your telecoms environment. Good housekeeping with passwords, diligence with IT servers and switch ports, plus good firewall disciplines all help. What is more you can add fraud cover to your telephone lines offering financial protection should your telephone system become the victim of a cyber-intrusion. We can help.
Here is a link to our website for more guidance: Telecom Fraud Protection
If you are unsure or perhaps even concerned and would like to talk to an expert, then why not contact our helpful team by dialling 01509 278278 or you could always let your fingers do the talking by emailing [email protected]