Telecommunications
Are you facing any of the following challenges?
- High usage frauds
- Vishing frauds
- Procurement and contracts related frauds
- Premium rate services (PRS) related frauds
- Fraudulent billing and waivers
- Money laundering, through m-commerce
- Unauthorised activations and adjustments to subscriber profile
- Commission arbitrage and misuse of promotions
- Misuse of internal and test SIM cards
- Disputes between telecom service providers and their business partners
- Other accounting/complex technical frauds
PwC’s Forensic Telecom team can help you address these and many more....
What differentiates us
Ensuring the best quality in whatever we do is the foundation of our value system. PwC India’s Forensic Telecom team has experienced professionals to steer you through your concerns.
- 50+ years combined work experience of leadership team with telecom clients
- Multi-disciplinary professionals comprising telecom engineers, forensic accountants, certified fraud examiners, MBAs, former police officers, lawyers, information technology experts, with adept knowledge of the sector
- Dedicated on-site, state-of-the-art forensic labs with highend servers capable of processing voluminous data, with storage capacity over 100 terra bytes
20,000+ man hours of investigations in telecom domain*
Dedicated forensic telecom practice, part of 350+ strong forensic team
Fully integrated capabilities in India for telecom fraud analytics
Experience in investigation of complex technical frauds
Experience of working with regulators
* Telecom operators, passive infrastructure providers, telecom bequipment vendors and value added services (VAS) providers
-
Our offerings
-
Fraud management strategy
Fraud management strategy
We help telecom companies develop and implement an entity-wide fraud management strategy with focus on three objectives – prevention, detection and response to fraud risks. Traditionally, Telcos have battled frauds in silos of revenue assurance, IT security, corporate vigilance, etc. A comprehensive and integrated fraud management strategy enables Telcos to avoid duplication of effort, resource fragmentation, slipping through the cracks and provides ‘one view’ of fraud risks and potential perpetrators. Our in-depth knowledge of industry best practices can help you leapfrog to develop a best-in-class antifraud framework.
An integrated fraud management strategy encompasses the following:
Prevention: Assessment and strengthening of telecom organisations’ ethics framework and processes, prevention primarily includes review of code of conduct, whistleblower policies, incident response mechanism and entity and process level fraud risks, etc. This leads to an alignment of the ethics framework and detailed mapping of preventive and detective controls to manage fraud risks.
Detection: This includes review of the existing policy and processes for fraud detection and setting up a comprehensive fraud detection framework.
Response: This includes a streamlined,speedy and structured mechanism to respond to fraud incidents. This will include assessment of various in-sourced, co-sourced and out-sourced models.
-
Telecom fraud analytics
Telecom fraud analytics
Telecom fraud analytics is used for a high degree of automation and generation of transaction alerts based on identified fraud risk scenarios for proactive monitoring. It helps Telcos discover anomalous patterns of emerging fraudulent behaviours and proactively identifying red flags across voice, data, SMS and other value-added services. Our specialised skills to perform social networking analysis and investigative data linking such as CDR analysis, users/IMEI correlation analysis, unconventional IMSI/ IMEI utilisation, etc. on voluminous data helps us uncover the relationship among users, phones and identify perpetrator(s) in investigations as well.
-
Fraud and misconduct investigation
Fraud and misconduct investigation
Our team can conduct event-led investigations by gathering and analysing data to help identify instances of impropriety, the parties involved as well as uncover the modus operandi. We also follow the approach to gather and protect evidence that can be presented in a court of law, provide expert witness services and provide litigation support.
-
Incident response management service
Incident response management service
Our domain specialised skills can help you handle sporadic incidences, find out the modus operandi, repeat offenders as well as gaps in key process, thereby enabling a quick turnaround for avenues such as incidence resolution and mitigating revenue, and reputation loss.
-
Fraud control unit set-up
Fraud control unit set-up
Our practice has assisted companies in setting up fraud control units (FCUs) on a design-build-operate-transfer model. We have helped design the governance and operational framework of the FCU, data analytics based queries for processes and functions that are monitored as part of the FCU. We adopt an all-encompassing approach, analysing all the applications and their data, irrespective of whether they have existing interfaces, as well as data from external sources such as credit bureaus and social networks.
-
Fraud management system (FMS) set-up and effectiveness
Fraud management system (FMS) set-up and effectiveness
We assist telecom companies to effectively implement and utilise fraud management systems, thus enabling appropriate return on its investment. We offer the following services:
- End-to-end support during implementation of fraud management framework
- Periodic reviews to ensure appropriate calibration of the framework
- Help in operating the fraud management system on a day-to-day basis, either from the office premises or offshore
-
Fraudulent activity reporting service
Fraudulent activity reporting service
We can help you with threats and discussions prevailing on social media, websites as well as other content through our subscription services. You can get an edge over perpetrators by obtaining an outsider’s view of fraudulent activities targeted at your company and supplement inward focus on fraud management.
-
Fraud risk review for IT and network systems
Fraud risk review for IT and network systems
We assist companies in developing strategies to handle the end-to-end information lifecycle, right from creation to destruction of confidential information. Our specialised Forensic Technology Services practice assists companies in
- Managing access to digital assets
- Investigating incidents related to cyber crime such as intellectual property theft
- Unauthorised access to digital assets, changes to database and critical system configuration, phishing attacks
- Denial of service attacks
- Website defacement
- Malware analysis
- Any other unauthorised activity on the network through the use of forensic analytics
- E-discovery procedures, etc.
We can also review your company’s existing policies related to identity and access management, firewalls, host intrusion detection and prevention, anti-virus and malware, data backups and system management server.
-
Telecom contract reviews
Telecom contract reviews
Telcos have outsourced critical business processes and have large and long duration service contracts with network vendors, IT providers, contact centre providers, etc.
We help review these contracts for the following:
- Recover revenues
- Identify unapplied penalties
- Identify missed service level agreements (SLAs) leading to potential cost savings
- Detect misapplied payment terms
- Identify vague and un-implementable contract clauses for rectification
- Recommend event and reporting controls to strengthen contract management
-
Corporate intelligence
Corporate intelligence
Beyond background checks, our corporate intelligence practice evaluates the integrity, reputation as well as the performance track record of individuals, management groups, and corporate entities. This is done by collecting and analysing information that provides crucial insights for business decision-making. This practice can also gauge a wide spectrum of potential risks for companies seeking to enter an emerging market for the first time.
-
Dispute advisory services
Dispute advisory services
Our specialists deliver a wide range of services to help prevent and resolve disputes and other forms of disagreements within business arrangements. We provide assistance in the analysis of issues, evidence collation, evaluation of damage arising from a breach and expert witness testimony in arbitration, mediation, transaction disputes and insurance claims.
Our forensic telecom team has experience with various fraud scenarios
Scenario: Setting up a false identity to gain access to network services and use it without incurring charges
Scenario: Configuration changes in the VoIP firewall of the carrier network to enable unauthorised VoIP traffic
Scenario: Providing favourable voice call termination rates to ILD carriers with vested interest, causing revenue loss to the Telco
Scenario: Fraudulent balance created in the m-commerce account, and subsequently transferred or cashed
Scenario: Promotional offer for additional credit on recharge amount misused by sales channels
Scenario: A leading passive infrastructure provider involved in a dispute with another telecom firm to whom the passive infrastructure was leased
