Call accounting as a security tool

In this day and age of corporate espionage, the importance of tracking the source of a call, and detecting internal or external toll fraud has escalated in priority for many CEOs in today's heightened security-conscious climate. According to a study by the American Society for Industrial Security, industrial espionage could account for potential losses for all American industry of as much as $63 billion.The actual dollar amount is heavily debated, but everyone agrees that the problem can't be taken lightly. Toll Fraud alone costs the American economy $5 billion annually.

Telephone system security

Industrial "spies" employ a variety of methods to steal a company's secrets, or collect information. Studies have shown that the enemy most often lies within - approximately 85 percent of espionage crimes are perpetrated by employees. Your telephone system - along with your corporate assets, trade secrets and other proprietary information - are vulnerable to the degree that you do not have call accounting software in place to track suspicious call activity. The first step in security is having a safe base of operation.

MegaCall has three zones of security to protect itself:

• Operating System Security
• Program Security
• Data Security

Each of these three zones controls a different aspect of security and each security zone has its own settings that can be set according to specific needs.

The security module of MegaCall manages access to system features and database data. An administrator can limit the options available to a specific user and can place restrictions on data records that a user can view and/or edit.

Attacks on your Telephone Resources

Unauthorized calls can be both internally and externally generated. Some possible indications of toll fraud are:

• Calls to valid destinations from extensions that should not be making those calls, such as, an incoming CO trunk making calls to the company's customer base.
• Calls to unacceptable destinations.
• Calls that are too long for their type.
• Calls that are too short for their type.
• Missing call data records for calls that should be recorded.

Toll Fraud Detection

MegaCall toll fraud detection consists of two feature sets: Loss of SMDR features and call pattern analysis features. The toll fraud monitor uses toll fraud reports to monitor potential toll fraud.

The system runs the toll fraud reports once every hour, automatically adjusting their date range for the last hour. The toll fraud system counts the number of calls that match the restrictions of each toll fraud report. The call count of each report is compared to that report's thresholds. An alarm is sent to the MegaAlarm alarm module, if indicated. This allows detection of suspected toll fraud call patterns.