Orillion Solutions and the Risk & Assurance Group (RAG) have announced the successful completion of the first phase of their blockchain-based consortium collaboration to combat fraud within the global telecommunications industry.
As the world becomes more connected, so does the rapid increase in telecom fraud, which is a complex and evolving field of criminal activity and a low-risk alternative to traditional methods of financial crime, costing today’s world some $32,7-billion (€29-billion) annually, according to a joint report published the by Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre and Trend Micro.
Orillion Solutions developed its telco fraud blockchain technology using the Linux Foundations HyperLedger Fabric architecture for use by the RAG consortium of approved telcos and vendors, aiming to change the way telcos combat fraud and ultimately help to protect their customers.
The blockchain solution allows fraud intelligence to be securely shared between the consortium members in real-time and use this combined intelligence to prevent and detect fraud more effectively. The hive mind approach is a proven system of symbiotic intelligence.
During the first phase of the project, the RAG consortium piloted the use of blockchain technology to collaborate in tackling wangiri fraud, which impacts millions of mobile telephony customers every day across the world.
Creating a distributed wangiri numbering ledger between trusted industry sources allowed consortium members to more proactively monitor incoming fraud from these numbers and take preventative action before calls are received by their customers.
The pilot went from concept to implementation in just 14 weeks, and connected 12 network peers supporting 35 global entities.
Once live, more than 650-million customers worldwide are being protected, and its is collecting fraud data from close to 90% of countries globally with more than 20 000 fraudulent sources shared.
Anthony Sani, executive director of Orillion Solutions, believes that blockchain use cases need to look beyond technology to achieve success.
“Start with the end customer and what value this creates for them. Protecting customers from fraud is great for all customers.
“Secondly, building and scaling the consortium is the toughest challenge to overcome in blockchain projects. Our partnership with the Risk & Assurance Group and other industry vendors has been instrumental in this regard. RAG have been pioneers in driving industry collaboration, and our partnership with them brings credibility, independence, and trust to interested consortium members.
“The potential for blockchain to change how fraud is addressed by industry is really exciting which we’re looking forward to continuing with RAG in the next project phase,” he says.