Israeli Company Targets Next-Gen Fraud

The profit potential of wireless data services gets plenty of attention. But what about the new fraud opportunities these services will create?

During Supercomm 2001, Neteye (www.neteyecorp.com), a subsidiary of Israel-based Telrad Networks (www.telrad.com), publicized next-generation fraud risks and its solutions. In addition to marketing its fraud, security management and mediation software, Neteye has built a database of information on more than 180 Internet fraud scams.

With wireless and IP networks intersecting, carriers need a better understanding of the risks associated with IP networks, said Ronit Suhayeg, Neteye product manager.

Next-generation risks include traditional telecom scams such as subscription fraud and stealing and reselling airtime, plus a few new tricks. For instance, Suhayeg predicts content stealing and reselling will become a problem as network speeds increase and more valuable subscription content is routinely accessed from wireless devices. Another future risk is denial-of-service attacks similar to those experienced by Yahoo (www.yahoo.com) and Amazon.com (www.amazon.com) last year.

Unlike traditional wireless networks, IP networks have many points of entry for criminals. Possible entry points include wireless gateways, ISP gateways and application servers.

Neteye’s mediation software addresses this IP network attribute, collecting information from many network elements. For instance, in GPRS applications, the software gathers data from the source GPRS support node, the gateway GPRS support node, the MSC and the ISP gateway. The collected information then can be graphically organized for reports or reformatted for use by billing, fraud or other business applications.

The company’s fraud system processes information from various network elements and alerts users when questionable activities are detected. The alerts also can be correlated to others in an ongoing investigation and routed to the investigator handling the case.