Telecom
Infobip Identifies Five Frauds Impacting the Messaging Ecosystem
Infobip, global cloud communications platform has identified five common frauds impacting mobile users in the messaging ecosystem. Infobip explains the security challenges enterprises and mobile network operators (MNOs) face in the application-to-person (A2P) messaging ecosystem. Company also explains its role as a co-guardian of the A2P ecosystem with MNOs, helping protect brands and mobile users with its firewall.
With more and more brand-to-consumer interactions moving to digital channels, ensuring the security and privacy of this communication is vital to deliver a great customer experience. But, while the A2P market will grow to $29 billion by 2024, fraud and the revenues lost to fraud are also increasing. So, now more than ever, all organizations in the A2P ecosystem must protect mobile users and consumers by providing secure communication.
Infobip, which operates a state-of-the-art omnichannel firewall, has identified five critical security challenges MNOs and enterprises need to tackle:
- Artificially inflated traffic: Artificial inflation of traffic fraud uses bots to generate one-time PIN requests to generate undue costs and financially benefit the fraudster
- Flubot: spreading like flu, flubot starts with a fraudulent link leading users to a malicious site to download an app or security update, which infects a phone with malware
- Smishing: SMS phishing, or smishing, is where fraudsters deceive consumers into revealing sensitive data which is misused. It costs consumers $10.1bn, according to RoboKiller
- Grey routes: routes that bypass MNO’s charging systems to deliver messages to end users, costing MNOs revenue and leaving mobile users unprotected from security and privacy risks
- Spam: unsolicited messages have been plaguing mobile users and consumers for some time
Cédric Gonin, VP Global Business Support at Orange International Carriers, said: “As a leading connectivity wholesaler catering to the needs of operators and content providers globally, Orange International Carriers has been securing its customers’ and partners’ international voice and messaging traffic for decades.
“And we’ve witnessed a steady increase in the number of attacks over the years, with fraudsters getting smarter and new types of fraud emerging, causing financial and reputational losses to telcos and businesses but also emotional distress for the end-user.
“Orange and Infobip/Anam therefore took advantage of their joint expertise in telecommunications security to develop a robust A2P SMS protect solution, which identifies current and emerging risks, and proactively safeguards telcos, businesses, and end-users on most channels.”
To help protect consumers, Infobip recommends MNOs work with well establish Messaging providers who have direct relationships with the large brands and also introduce technically superior firewall solutions to their networks to protect the A2P ecosystem.
Infobip also calls for regulatory change to remove the restrictions on MNOs using particular modules like content analysis to protect the end users from different fraud scenarios, particularly in Europe. Content analysis is crucial for improving security standards while maintaining high privacy norms.
For Enterprises, Infobip recommends using Messaging providers who have direct connections with MNO’s, protecting consumers security and privacy through established communications platforms with global infrastructure.
Matija Ražem, Vice President of Business Development at Infobip, said: “As the largest player in the SMS firewall market, we take our responsibility to protect MNO, enterprises, and consumers seriously. But we are all co-guardians of the A2P messaging ecosystem.
“While fraudsters are becoming ever more sophisticated, we can reduce AP2 fraud with a combined effort from all involved.
“The system is only as strong as its weakest link, so MNOs and enterprises should invest in their security and adopt the latest technology to combat fraudsters and protect their customers and business.
“That is why we have developed features like data anonymization, where our firewall separates sensitive customer data from the content, so customer’s privacy can’t be compromised.”
Infobip has been voted the number one SMS Firewall for four years straight, as voted by MNOs. Its Anam Protect firewall helps protect some 120 MNO networks and safeguards 1.2 billion mobile users combined with MNOs as co-guardians of the messaging ecosystem.
Infobip processes around 63 billion transactions over its firewall solutions and blocks more than one billion fraudulent messages monthly every month. Infobip has more than 800 direct connections to mobile network operators, enabling higher security and quality connectivity for their customers.
Apart from its SMS Firewall, Infobip have launched officially its Signals as part of its telco security portfolio, which stands out by using advanced technologies like machine learning to detect and blocking fraudulent traffic precisely.
Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) is planning to encourage geo-political regions that grants zero charges for ‘Right of Way’ approvals as well not implementing arbitrary charges on telecommunications base stations in their regions with zero tariff.
Engr. Gbenga Adebayo, chairman, ALTON disclosed this to Nigeria CommunincationsWeek against the backdrop of incessant closure of base stations in some states.
He said that operators believe that the way out of this arbitrary charges and high cost of RoW approvals is regional tariffs.
“Operators are advocating for a regional tariff which means that geographical regions of Nigeria where cost of doing business for telecommunications operators is extremely high will attract high tariff compared to regions where there is low operating cost.
“Our advocacy of regional tariff is not based on a particular state but on regions. As at today there are regions where we have zero cost of “Right of Way” and low cost of doing business. Tariffs should reflect on operating environment. This means that national rate plan should consider high and low cost of doing business.
“If this is implemented, in a long run we could witness some regions having zero tariff because operational cost in such regions are friendly to operators,” he said.
It would be recalled that Kogi State recently shut down some operators’ base stations on account of local levies which raises the call for discriminatory tariff among geographical locations.
AVEVA, a global leader in industrial software driving digital transformation and sustainability in industries, today announces the appointment of Sébastien Ory, 48, as EMEA VP in charge of the partner and distributor network. VP of AVEVA Southern Europe since 2022 and President of AVEVA France since 2023, Sébastien now replaces Karine Calvet while remaining President of AVEVA France.
Sébastien Ory as EMEA VP Partners & Channels, AVEVA
In this new role, he will oversee the relationships with the various stakeholders involved in the distribution of AVEVA software and will have direct responsibility for more than forty employees spread across the EMEA region. Sébastien Ory will report directly to Jesus Hernandez, the new SVP of the EMEA region, who replaces Evgeny Fedotov, now CCO of RIB.
More than 18-year career in the industry
A graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique de Paris and the Institut National de l’Aéronautique (ISAE-SupAero) in Toulouse, Sebastien Ory is an active advocate for driving sustainable progress in the industrial sector.
He began his career at France Telecom as a sales manager where he stayed for 4 years before giving a more industrial dimension to his career.
With fifteen years of experience in the industrial automation industry, Sebastien Ory has developed a strategic understanding of this field. After 10 years in Schneider Electric’s industrial automation business, he led the global industrial software business development team for Schneider Electric Software from 2015 to 2018, with a particular focus on the water, power generation, mining and food industries. During these 3 years, the introduction of new software solutions will allow Schneider Electric Software to initiate and develop significant growth areas.
7 years at AVEVA
In 2018, Sébastien joined AVEVA as Vice President of the Southeast Asia region, leading a team of 200 talents in charge of delivering cloud-based industrial analytics and AI software. In addition to the growing developing the teams he leads from the Singapore headquarters, part of his energy is devoted to establishing direct engagement with leaders of major groups in the region such as Petronas, Pertamina, PTT, Wilmar and Olam, to stimulate their digital transformation initiatives.
In 2022, he took over the leadership of AVEVA’s activities in Southern Europe, a major industrial market for the company, whose customers, world leaders in the fields of Energy, Chemicals, Agri-food, Pharmaceuticals and Water, are looking for AVEVA’s expertise to accelerate and drive their digital transformation and sustainability strategies, as well as their energy transition projects. The changes he brings to the organization of the sales team are bearing fruit and allow AVEVA to acquire new customers while consolidating key accounts. As Sebastien transitions to the role of VP EMEA Partners & Channels, Dominique Bazin becomes the new Vice President of AVEVA Southern Europe.
EMEA VP Partners & Channels: a highly strategic position within AVEVA
Sébastien now holds the position of Vice President in charge of the Partners and Channels for AVEVA in Europe, Middle East and Africa, a major market for the company. His main mission is to design and implement a strategy for the growth of indirect sales, through a network of partners and strong alliances with Digital Services Companies (DSCs), AI platform providers and independent software vendors (ISVs) whose solutions are compatible with the CONNECT platform.
Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) has hit back at Meta Platforms Inc, warning the tech giant that its threat to exit Nigeria will not erase its legal responsibilities or liabilities under the Nigerian law.
Meta said earlier today, May 3, that it “may be forced to effectively shut down the Facebook and Instagram services in Nigeria in order to mitigate the risk of enforcement measures.”
Meta’s warning came after it lost a legal bid last week to overturn a ₦220 million fine imposed by the FCCPC for violations of data protection and consumer rights laws.
Reacting to Meta’s threat, FCCPC, in a statement on Saturday, May 3, described Meta’s statement as “a calculated” move aimed at “inducing negative public reaction and potentially pressuring the FCCPC to reconsider its decision.”
FCCPC said that Meta threatening to leave Nigeria does not absolve the company of liabilities for the outcome of a judicial process.
“These infringements included denying Nigerians the right to control their personal data, transferring and sharing Nigerian user data without authorisation, discriminating against Nigerian users compared to users in other jurisdictions and abusing their dominant market position by forcing unfair privacy policies,” FCCPC wrote on X.
“Interestingly, Meta had been fined for similar breaches in Texas ($1.5b) and only recently was asked to pay $1.3 Billion for violating E.U. Data Privacy Rules.
Elsewhere in India, South Korea, France and Australia, Meta had faced varying penalties for similar breaches. But Meta never resorted to the blackmail of threatening to exit those countries. They obeyed.”
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