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or contractor (premium rate number
companies have been known to pay
cleaners to dial a number, leave it off the
hook and only hang up when they leave
the building).
Compliance might also mean using
the software to manage business and
personal calls more effectively. This
could involve something as simple as
building a set of business numbers in
order to differentiate between business
and personal usage and so discourage
employees from making personal calls. If
added inducement is needed, the system
could charge employees for personal calls.
Applications of this sort are
particularly useful in vertical markets
subject to tight regulation, such as
finance and banking. Proteus can be used
to verify trader activity and pinpoint who
a trader is calling, how frequently, for
how long and for how much.
Staff Activity Monitoring
Most modern call accounting
applications have the ability to monitor
metrics like inbound call times or call
wait times and display activity on a
wallboard or dashboard. Users can set
thresholds, e.g. a maximum 20-second
wait time for customers. If these are
exceeded, the wallboard can change
colour, from green to amber to red.
In contact centres, call accounting
systems can be used to monitor staff
productivity, helping drive SLAs and
meet key performance indicators (KPIs).
They can show a huge range of statistics
including which agents make the most
calls a day or are on the phone for
longest; who regularly exceeds call times;
who makes the most expensive calls etc..
Ultimately, the best call accounting
systems give businesses control over
their telephony infrastructure, helping
them with capacity planning, cost-
cutting, staff productivity and fraud
prevention, and ensuring a rapid return
on investment in new solutions.
Trevor Davis is head of product
management and call accounting at
Enghouse Interactive, a provider of
customer interaction management
solutions. Core technologies include
contact center, attendant console,
predictive outbound dialler, knowledge
management, IVR and call recording.
Enghouse Interactive has thousands of
customers worldwide.
Highly trained cyber-criminals are
targeting businesses and helping
themselves to millions of pounds
via a new scam known as ‘whaling’,
so called because fraudsters focus
on one large target, rather the many
smaller targets associated with
‘phishing’.
Whaling scams take the form of
messages to finance staff encouraging
them to expedite a payment to a
supplier that the Managing Director or
Chief Executive can’t complete as they
are away from the office.
It is estimated that since 2013,
‘whaling’ has cost medium and large
UK businesses a total of more than
£520m. As with any scam of this
type, the goal of whaling is to trick
someone into disclosing personal or
corporate information through email
correspondence.
The attacker does this by
intercepting emails between companies
and reading their contents. Over weeks
or months, the attacker learns how to
impersonate the style and language
of the emails before sending a bogus
request for money to be transferred to a
new bank account.
These attacks are often successful
because the attacker successfully
mimics the style of the sender/receiver
and because the email messages they
use to infiltrate the target display the
usual ‘to’ and ‘from’ details, rather than
the actual email address of the attacker.
Solution
One way to counter this problem,
says Frama, is to use the secure
Frama RMail platform for sending and
receiving encrypted, business-critical
communications.
Once installed and added to an
existing email client, RMail gives you the
option to send any email message with
256-bit encryption; legally verifiable
proof of delivery and opening; and a full
audit trail of who said what to whom
and when.The solution can also be used
to send files up to 1GB in size and to
e-sign documents and forms.
Frama is warning businesses of a new scam
– and offering a solution.
A whale of a scam
FRAMA :
RMail
ISSUE 129
