IRISH BUSINESSES are facing an increasing threat from fraud carried out on their phone systems which could cost thousands of euro, a telecoms firm has warned.
According to Minute Buyer, international and Irish-based fraudsters are targeting companies, finding holes in their telecoms security and hacking the systems to steal minutes from company phone systems.
Shaun Hayden, director of Minute Buyer, said the company’s research has indicated that Private Branch Exchange (PBX) fraud has increased significantly in recent months.
“Certainly over the last four or five months I’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of cases,” he said.
Mr Hayden said companies were facing two forms of fraud: external, through hackers, and internal, through misuse by staff.
“Some of it is opportunistic, some of it is planned,” he said. “The cases that we’re talking about, it’s very planned in that external parties are constantly trying and looking for the opportunity to use a company’s phone system as their platform for free calls.” Hackers use tools ranging from password-stealing software to automatic diallers looking for numbers that are available.
Internal fraud involves allowing access to the PBX and diverting the phone elsewhere.
One problem, Hayden said, is that in some firms telecoms falls between two departments – the facilities manager and the IT manager.
“They have exploited that vulnerability where no one has been looking at understanding or analysing this issue,” he said.
It is also very difficult to detect, he said, with thousands of euro worth of fraud carried out during weekends or holiday periods, making it harder to catch fraudsters in the act.
Exact figures for the extent of the problem are hard to come by, however.
The company quotes figures from the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation, which says Irish firms could be paying out up to €75 million a year for PBX fraud, although the true figure is predicted to be much higher.
Mr Hayden said he did not know of any case where a hacker had been prosecuted for PBX fraud.
