---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Simon Gardner <juniper@cix.compulink.co.uk>
By Sheridan Nye, Total Telecom
British Telecom is tackling the telecommunications industry's
billion-dollar fraud problem head on with the first commercial release of
Sheriff anti-fraud technology.
Sheriff will be used to detect and block fraudulent use of BT's card-based
services, which are particularly susceptible to abuse via card copying and
misused personal identification numbers. Sheriff, which stands for
Statistical Heuristic Engine to Reliably and Intelligently Fight Fraud,
was developed last year by BT and MCI. The rollout follows an 18-month
development phase. A full-scale rollout of Sheriff on all BT's public
telecom networks is expected in two or three years, followed by expansion
into its business and cellular services.
By comparing call patterns with control data, Sheriff can detect a
fraudulent card call made anywhere in the world. The system alerts BT's
fraud department where specialized staff decide whether to cancel the
call.
Sheriff's ability to monitor and attack fraud is built on BT's proprietary
analysis of fraud patterns -- based on artificial intelligence modelling
techniques -- and is underpinned by database technology from Versant
Object Technology. The Versant database holds BT's proprietary fraud rules
and algorithms as objects that Sheriff processes against call data from
switches and user profiles from its customer service system.
Object databases are ideally suited to telecom fraud applications, said
Jonathan Cooper, director of marketing at Versant's telecom division, as
complex and interrelated data must be analyzed in near real-time to shut
down fraudulent calls quickly. The current generation of relational
databases only permits 2-D modeling and would need mapping code to deal
with the 3-D object data routinely handled by object databases, he said.
The object database must handle not only complex pattern data, but must
also preserve relations between different data. "Every call record
contains information about where the call was originated, where it is
going, any services attached to it, and who is paying the bill," Cooper
said.
Telephone companies are reluctant to discuss figures, but fraud is
believed to siphon between 3 percent and 6 percent of revenues -- billions
of dollars -- every year as telephone hackers target unprotected switches.
One of the most vulnerable areas is dial-through fraud where, for
instance, a call to a voice-mail system can be redirected to another
number.
"Telcos are losing billions of dollars every year," said Cooper. "So even
if they can stop a fraction of it, they are going to make significant
savings."
The object model also allows Sheriff to adapt incrementally to meet the
changing attacks thrown at it by fraudsters, as individual data elements
can be updated without affecting the overall system.
"In the last year, we've see a maturing of the [object database]
industry," said Cooper. "The telcos are bringing some large-scale
deployments of which Sheriff is one example. Organizations like BT are
confident that the technology is stable and robust."
Sheriff was originally developed as part of a joint venture between BT and
MCI, which subsequently abandoned its global role as part of BT's Concert
alliance to join rival WorldCom. However, "MCI is still cooperating on
many aspects of Sheriff," said Cooper, adding that the company is still
expected to deploy the system this year.
-o-
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Received on Fri Mar 27 07:29:29 1998