Month: June 2021

The telecom industry is evolving rapidly. Changing conditions have compelled telecom operators to shun their legacy business models and adopt new ways of operating. One such model catching the eye is the telecom service hub.

To keep pace with changes, telecom operators worldwide have started coming together strategically to form a telecom hub that connects their local service providers. The goal is to become global carriers that carry internal data and signaling traffic worldwide.

A telecom hub is cost-efficient as it reduces the costs of maintenance, deployment, and hardware. But more importantly, it gives them a wider reach to global subscribers. They are also able to implement global security practices and innovate more frequently to meet the subscribers’ changing demands.

No wonder the telecom hub is rapidly becoming a preferred model for operators.

However, a telecom hub can function seamlessly when there is trust among the different operators and local service providers. That’s possible only through improved security and concerted efforts to prevent revenue leakage.

Let’s see how the telecom hub can achieve these goals.

How Can Telecom Hubs Prevent Revenue Leakage And Build Trust?

According to the Communications Fraud Control Association (CFCA) study, around 1.74% of global frauds were telecom frauds.

Some of the common frauds that occurred in the industry included traffic pumping schemes, vishing calls, Wangari, International Revenue Sharing Fraud (IRSF), and call forwarding fraud. However, one of the leading factors for revenue leakage is the Application to Person (A2P) SMS. Companies send SMS to subscribers across the world to promote their offerings. However, a study by Mobilesquared revealed that out of the 2 trillion SMS sent by 2024, around one-quarter of them would be sent via grey routes. If this occurs, the telecom industry will be staring at a cumulative revenue loss of $37.1 billion.

Grey routes are not legal as direct routes and this has implications in the telecom hubs discussion too. In direct routes, the telecom hubs have conversion platforms. The operators have complete transparency on SMS delivery. However, when an SMS passes through a grey route, the operator and the company that sent the SMS lose track of it. The message passes through legal and illegal routes exposing the SMS to security risks. That apart, the operators also lose on the critical interconnect fees. Eventually, the SMS sent is delivered late or not delivered at all, this hurting the cause of the business that sent the messages in the first place. Also, given that grey routes fail to obey the rules and regulations between operators, there is a risk of trust deterioration with the telecom operator too.

Mobile operators earn a significant chunk of their revenue from SMS. Hence, plugging this revenue leakage is critical.

The perfect antidote to grey route messaging is SMS firewall.

An SMS firewall helps telecom operators prevent fraudulent SMS activities. It can be beneficial for various purposes.

It ensures that the subscribers do not receive any fake, spoofed, or spam messages and protects them from security breaches.

It closely monitors every SMS to check its source address, destination address, and the route that’s used to deliver the message. It ensures that there is no A2P bypass, global title bypass, or any other illegal bypass.

The firewalls can also be customized for different partners in the hub. Operators can customize the firewall rule for specific partners, income traffic sources, and sender IDs.

Most importantly, it ensures that every SMS terminating at the operator’s network is charged correctly. It helps the operators plug the revenue leakage and maximize their profits by identifying untapped sources of revenue.

SMS firewall has become so important that it is expected to grow into a $3 billion market by 2025.

Conclusion

The telecom industry is critical for a country’s economic progress. Sadly, as the telecom industry progresses, the incidents of fraud will also increase. Hence, the onus lies upon the telecom hub to establish strict measures to prevent revenue leakages. Fraudulent messages will break the subscribers’ trust and damage the operators’ reputations in the telecom hub. As the number of A2P SMS increases over the next few years, telecom operators will have to take the lead and work in collaboration to monetize it. To combat such telecom risks, the telecom operators must work with a trusted telecom solution provider who has the right capabilities, expertise, and technologies to prevent losses.

Globe Teleservices is at the forefront in providing revenue enhancement solutions to telecom operators. Our SMS firewall is an intelligent system that’s built on AI and ML. It checks for unwanted content such as fake or spoofed messages, spam, etc., and filters it. The firewall also identifies and blocks the grey routes to ensure that the SMS traffic is directed through the legal routes and the operators receive the agreed fees. As telecom operators examine solutions like telecom hubs, it’s only apt that they focus on well-rounded solutions that provide utility, functionality, and security for everyone in the ecosystem.

According to Statista, the application-to-person (A2P) market is poised to reach the heights of $45.93 billion this year. But that may just be the beginning. There’s no doubt that enterprises across different industries such as banking, healthcare, and travel are increasingly using A2P SMS to communicate with their customers. With that push, it’s no wonder that some reports suggest the A2P SMS market will grow to $64.24 billion by 2028.

A2P SMS is an ideal method for enterprises to connect with their customers. However, mobile network operators (MNO) face several challenges with SMS delivery and monetization.

These challenges could include – grey routing, unregulated networks, messages getting lost or delayed in the route, revenue leakage, an inability to terminate the SMS at the endpoint, and inability to block inappropriate content.

The operators have to take proactive measures to address these challenges and ensure timely delivery of A2P SMS.

How To Ensure A2P SMS Delivery?

1. Reliable routing

An enterprise pays for the number of messages they send and not for the number of messages received by their customers. Hence, operators have to ensure that the SMS is delivered to the right person at the right time. Often, the operators have no control over the routes. Service providers may use grey routes to deliver the SMS. Grey routes are unauthorized networks. It only results in revenue loss for operators, but it also exposes the end-customer to spam messages and potential security risks. The only way to address this issue is by ensuring that the SMS travels through a reliable and authorized network. Operators can either re-route the SMS over tested routes or do proactive route testing to identify suspect routes and curtail them. Alternately, operators can also opt for direct routing. In direct routing, the operator can set up a direct connection with operators in other countries. This will help them send a large volume of messages to customers of that country on time and protect them from malware and other security issues.

2. Monitoring and filtering content

In most countries, messages are subject to the oversight of the Government. The operators are expected to be stringent with compliance and filter or block suspicious messages. In other countries, operators are expected to monitor and block content to safeguard the customers from fake, fraudulent, and potentially dangerous content. Operators must have an active mechanism to blacklist and filter such content and ensure that customers are not bombarded with inappropriate or potentially illegal messages. Countries like India have already started taking initiatives to scrub and standardize SMS content and send it in a specific template to protect customers from spam. Monitoring and filtering content proactively will help operators safeguard the enterprise’s reputation and improve SMS delivery.

3. SMS termination

Typically, SMS termination means that the A2P SMS has been successfully delivered to the customer. Mobile operators must know about every message terminating on their network. However, in most cases, operators lose revenue due to illegal A2P routes. Sometimes hackers get access to the network and flood it with irrelevant messages without paying appropriate fees. That’s why it’s important to have a direct termination agreement with operators across different countries. This will enable the local operators to terminate messages on their network and ensure effective SMS delivery. However, ensure that these operators are reliable and will deliver the SMS safely. Reliability and trust are the foundation of the relationship between the mobile operators to function smoothly.

4. SMS firewall

SMS firewall protects the mobile networks from frauds and vulnerabilities. The messages are routed through the firewall to ensure that they are not fraudulent or suspicious in nature. The firewall automatically blocks the messages that are not compliant and protects customers from receiving them. It saves the operators’ reputation and overhead costs and also ensures safe SMS delivery to customers.

Conclusion

Some challenges, such as the recent TRAI regulation, may not be within the operator’s control. Over 600 million messages did not reach the customers because it required operators to register their entity, SMS header, and content template, leading to several technical glitches. However, solutions such as reliable routing, content scrubbing, firewall solutions, etc., are within the operator’s control. They can use these solutions to deliver A2P messages on time. It will help in building trust with enterprises. To ensure smooth delivery of A2P SMS, operators must partner with a telecom solution provider with the right expertise and experience in SMS delivery.

Globe Teleservices provides mobile network operators with powerful solutions for enabling high-quality A2P SMS delivery. We offer API connect for A2P messages, direct interconnection with more than 100+ carriers, and leading operators and direct SMS termination in 35+ countries globally. Operators can also leverage our high-quality direct routes to send A2P messages to end customers and prevent further revenue leakage.

Telecommunication networks have become an integral part of major national operations. Apart from the evergreen popularity of Voice and Messaging, we now have a new national obsession; data! As of 2021, about 60% of the world’s population (4.66 billion) actively uses the internet. Of course, the criticality of the telecom network and the high disruptive potential raises the stakes. There is a risk of potential misuse or disruption and that can be a major threat to the national security of any country. So, it won’t be an understatement to say that telecom networks now hold utmost importance in national security.

In light of such fears, many nations have implemented changes with immediate effect to ensure network safety. For example, many countries (including India) have imposed a ban on the use of China-manufactured products and applications. The National Security Directive on Telecommunication Sector (NSDTS) of the Indian government has also banned the use of any unauthorized telecom networks. But the nature of security threats continues to evolve and so must the security stance.

One key element of the security stance is the growing focus on country gateways. Think, for instance, what would happen if a rogue actor created malware that flooded the data network of a major telecom carrier in an emerging country? Genuine users would face problems with using their data networks, business operations that relied on the internet would grind to a halt, and critical functions like remote education and telemedicine would get crippled. This could prove devastating. That apart, there are deep-rooted challenges to address. For instance, SS7 and Diameter signaling protocols in telecommunication can pose a potential threat to the banking system if hacked. Countries across the globe are therefore looking at building a secured country gateway for telecommunication networks.

In this article, we will discuss why a country gateway is crucial to ensure cybersecurity in the country. We will also highlight the key features offered by country gateways to support the argument. But before getting into the details, let’s understand what a country gateway is.

What is a country gateway?

A country gateway acts as a robust barrier that enables secured networking for data transmission across countries. It establishes a set of administrative procedures which are mutually accepted by interacting networks. In telecommunications, the country gateway regulates the incoming and outgoing data from one discrete network inside the boundary to those outside.

It serves as a checkpoint where all the data is screened for any malicious activity. This helps protect the data from potential breaches and cyber threats. It also avoids any unauthorized traffic in the network.

The country gateway usually follows more than one protocol to connect multiple networks. This provides multilayered protection against malware. These gateways are usually automated and are capable of decision-making, based on a defined set of rules. This advantage provides an edge to a country gateway over a conventional firewall.

How does a country gateway provide security?

A country gateway serves as an entry and exit point into a secured network. So, whenever data is received, it first goes through the gateway. The gateway ensures that the incoming information does not violate any of the nation’s security policies. If no issue or malware is detected, the country gateway then decides the routing path of these data packets. The gateway works for outgoing information or requests similarly. This way the country gateway acts as a firewall to avoid any unauthorized or unwanted actions.

A country gateway can either be hardware, software (cloud-based), or a combination of both. Of late, cloud-based gateways seem to be providing more flexibility with remote networks.

Why is a country gateway essential to security?

With advancements in technology, cybercriminals have also grown sophisticated. It has become difficult to differentiate genuine data from malware. As digitalization has spiked exponentially, the establishment of a secured country gateway has become essential to prevent malicious data from entering the safe system and crippling it. Let’s discuss the key features of a country gateway that makes it ideal for security:

1. Malware scan and control: Country gateways do not allow any viruses or malware to corrupt an operating network. The gateway scans all the data that passes through and matches it to existing or known malware. Some gateways also run the code of suspected malware in a controlled environment to see how it behaves; also known as sandboxing. This helps in detecting hidden threats. So, if any malware is detected, the gateway blocks it right away.
2. Decryption: Most of the internet traffic is now encrypted by HTTPS which makes it difficult to identify a threat. Many gateways can decrypt HTTPS to search for malware. After scanning, if the network is found safe, the gateway re-encrypts it and forwards it to the recipient. In addition, country gateways can also translate one data format to another. This helps in smooth networking without compromising the integrity of the information transferred.
3. URL filter: Although HTTPS is the standard protocol for most IT operations, still some of the networks support HTTP and FTP protocols. The country gateway scans all types of internet protocols and allows only the approved traffic to connect. These lists are maintained as a part of the national security policies. So, any network that is not in compliance with the approved list gets blocked by the gateway. Furthermore, the gateway can also block individual data packets within a network. This is called content filtering. The policies for content filtering are usually customized based on the requirements.
4. Data loss prevention (DLP): A secured country gateway also protects sensitive information such as confidential documents from flowing out of a network. This means that a gateway will not allow any intellectual property or data to leave a system without approval. This process is called exfiltration. For example, if an application requires documents to be uploaded, the data in those documents will be screened for confidential information. It will be approved only if it does not violate any of the security policies. This way DLP protects the crucial data against cybercrimes such as hacking.
5. Application control: This function enables the country gateway to control the applications used by any citizen. With the increasing popularity of social media apps, the risks involved are also growing sharply. The country gateway can therefore be used to regulate resources that an application can access.
6. Cross-layer function: The country gateway provides cross-layer services which aim to improve the CIA triad (confidentiality, integrity, and availability) of transmitted data. A cross-layer function also enables the country gateway to interoperate between all seven layers of data transmission, as proposed in the open systems interconnections (OSI) model. This makes the country gateway a one-stop solution for all security concerns.

How to choose a secured country gateway?

Choosing a country gateway is a crucial decision. As it deals with highly confidential data, it can compromise a nation’s economy if mishandled or leaked. The chosen country gateway should also provide high-risk management. It should be able to detect early threats such as state or non-state hacks and take immediate actions.

Although most gateways are customized based on the requirement, it is important to search for a flexible solution provider who understands the world of telecom, is an expert at the security aspects, and has a clear focus on new and emerging technologies like AI and ML.

Conclusion

Currently, digitalization and cyber threats are progressing hand-in-hand. Hence, it’s important to deploy country gateways to enhance security. The right gateway provides a nation robust security and a clear vision for the future. This helps the country gateway be ready to respond at speed with an automated call of action in case of any breach; today and tomorrow.

Globe Teleservices offers a comprehensive suite of solutions designed specifically to meet all the requirements of the global telecom industry. If you need any help with the gateways, you can reach out to us at www.globeteleservices.com.