Since 1993, FPSS clients credit FPSS with shutting down more kinds of fraud that others miss, e.g., fraudulent "call centers" stopped cold in minutes versus days and weeks. With phone fraud estimated to increase 35% in 1998 and criminals stealing at a rate of $20 million per day in the U.S. alone, FPSS has proven its technology against well-funded 24-hour by 365-day high-tech crooks.
"FPSS 5.1 builds on the real-world customer successes of earlier versions," said Jeff Hodgson, Vice President at BCS. "The key is fast payback," he said. "We shut down more kinds of fraud faster-before it hurts. FPSS found $830,000/month fraud on one network and cut it to $2,700. Payback was two weeks. A recent installation was experiencing $150,000 a day in fraud within 30 days it was under $5,000."
When challenged on the secrecy of earlier versions, Mr. Hodgson stated, "We had to protect our existing customers and the entire industry by ensuring criminals could not take advantage of this powerful technology. With that security certain, we could open for broad release. This policy protects clients and their employees by ensuring that insider fraud is now an impossibility. Crooks can't get away with phone fraud now that Fraud Prevention SmartSystem is on the loose."
In a field renowned for the variety and ingenuity of its criminals, FPSS detects and alarms the fraud other systems miss. "I was skeptical at first that phone fraud could be stopped," said a fraud department executive of a major long distance carrier. "Using Beck's system, we stopped virtually 95% within the first 3 hours." At least one FPSS customer reports stopping more than 99%.
"The incredible speed of scam shutdown enables our fast payback," said Hodgson. The operations manager of an inter-exchange carrier reported stopping 310 call sell operations within minutes of startup. "Before, it took us four or five days. [FPSS is] the best investment in fraud management I've ever seen." As word spreads among lawbreakers that certain networks and switches can only be hit for a few minutes' fraud, criminals re-focus illicit efforts on more profitable systems.
"FPSS's real-time effectiveness derives from a new technology that constructs a unique three-dimensional "FPSS Usage Signature™" for every customer and Account. Every critical parameter of every CDR (call detail record) is recorded then modeled", reported Alan Shitara, Beck's Vice President Engineering and Operations.
Unlike systems that require setting thresholds, having to know a fraud pattern, or are limited by sampling, FPSS can detect fraud faster because it doesn't have to predict where or how the fraud is to be conducted. Fraud is exposed in real-time as it develops. The methodology of the ruse becomes irrelevant. What FPSS spots is the misuse itself. That's part of the secret of the speed.
Flexible and standard reports, some of which are automatically generated, direct investigators' efforts to specific trunks, ANIs, subscribers, etc. Their work is streamlined. A long distance reseller using FPSS detected off-net internal fraud within its wholesaler's network. But even after FPSS pinpointed the source, the wholesaler's fraud detection system failed to detect it. The wholesaler ignored the warning. Months later, when the multinational wholesaler had lost tens of millions of dollars, it became clear the retailer's FPSS had alarmed the early misuse within just twenty minutes.
FPSS' reports convinced courts to award one carrier $2.8 million from criminals, then convicted every one. Of confidential installed systems, the largest FPSS handles is more than 30 million CDRs per day. Much higher capacities are possible.
