Collaboration was a security backwater. What changed?
Let me give you the answer in the first sentence itself: 29 billion euros — that is what changed.
Telecom frauds cost the industry and end customers over €29bn ($33bn) each year, according to the Cyber-Telecom Crime Report from Europol. The report serves as a technical guide for stakeholders in the telecom industry, outlines the most common forms in which these fraud takes place, explains how telecom fraud works and provides suggestions on how to prevent and detect criminal activity.
Telecommunications fraud is by no means a new crime. As the field of telecom continues to evolve, so should its security. Knowing its current threat landscape can assist in overcoming the impact of crimes like telecom fraud and prepare for future threats.
What about Zoom?
Well, what about it? Is it insecure? Sure, everyone already knows it. There are a million pages talking about how messed up Zoom’s security is. But here is something more for you to chew on — Teams, Webex, Meet, Duo, Skype — they are all insecure too and have been so for ages. https://www.consumerreports.org/video-conferencing-services/videoconferencing-privacy-issues-google-microsoft-webex/
And if you think enterprise collaboration systems are safe, read on…
Case 1: The CEO Con Job
The CEO Con job is one of the most daring heists that we have seen in the last few years. The hackers spent months targeting the company, found ways to bypass all the security infrastructure of the company, and ended up conning the regional head of a multi-national corp into
- Believing that he is part of a secretive acquisition bid
- Assuming that the emails and phone calls from the MNC CEO are legitimate
- Transferring millions of dollars to a remote bank, from where it disappeared into thin air.
The scam would’ve been much bigger — money had already been transferred 3 times into the bank. Read the full account of how this scam went down at our blog.
Case2: International Fraud by a Teenage Drug Cartel
A business analyst in a Canadian company noticed a large amount of duplicate data in a corporate production system, specifically customer street addresses. A carrier’s corporate enterprise security architect was approached. An innovative and scalable model for an international drug cartel was discovered, one that was being operated by a 15-year-old boy.
It was eventually learned that the criminal was using a variety of frauds, including IRSF and money laundering, for the sake of realizing criminal revenue. It is assumed from the elegance of the model’s design that it was a part of an undiscovered whole.
Once upon a time, collaboration systems were regarded by hackers as abstruse — data networks were easier to hack into, and the returns were better. But now things have changed — collaboration systems are now completely software and therefore easily hackable, but unfortunately, security thinking has yet to permeate the ops teams that manage these collab networks.
The way in which hackers are attacking networks is constantly evolving. Assertion’s constant monitoring bots makes sure that you are always aware, prepared and secure.
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ASSERTION© is a world leader in automated security for collaboration systems. Our Cybersecurity and compliance solutions for UC and CC systems have been deployed at some of the largest financial institutions in the world, securing their systems from data breaches, toll fraud, and internal threats. For more information, please visit www.assertion.cloud/collabsecure.