Securing SMS

The news that Comic Relief amassed £15.1m of the £74.4m raised for Red Nose Day this year through SMS donations underlines how mobile is now increasingly being used by consumers to engage with brands and charities in different ways. This deepening consumer engagement is positive news for mobile, but the more mobile subscribers use the channel in different ways, the more it also attracts the unwelcome attention of fraudsters. So how can operators allow these innovative new ways of engaging through SMS to continue thriving, while still keeping the mobile channel secure?

Growing engagement
This year mobile phone users were able to donate to Comic Relief by pledging £1, £5 or £10 by texting “Yes” to the shortcode, 70010. Over 4.3m text messages were sent, showing the popularity of the channel.

A host of new text donation services have also recently been launched. For example, online charitable donations service, JustGiving recently launched JustTextGiving in partnership with Vodafone, while today saw the launch of another solution, Givey.

These initiatives show that SMS is a growing channel to help people to engage with a range of organisations in more convenient and efficient ways. Mobile phones are with people wherever they go, so it does not come as a great surprise that they are being used to donate to charities and pay for goods. However, whilst this growth is a positive development for mobile, it also begins to draw the unwanted attention of electronic fraudsters, who are seeking to use SMS to de-fraud consumers.

We expect services such as mobile money and targeted marketing via SMS to thrive in many different markets. However, in order to help these services achieve further success, the messaging channel must remain secure.

Data collected from our messaging customers across EMEA has found that up to 8 per cent of mobile-originated, roaming subscriber messaging traffic could be considered fraud. In this context, this is mainly from subscriber spoofing – where someone sends a message pretending to be someone else, in order to escape paying for the message sent. As such, it is important that operators continue to take proactive action to secure their networks, and their subscribers from increasingly sophisticated fraud attacks.

Security solutions
As the popularity of SMS for financial transactions continues to grow, SMS fraud attempts are also likely to grow. In order to prepare for this, security solutions and controls that protect both the network and the user need to be implemented.

For operators to cope with the threat of cyber fraudsters and protect their networks and subscribers, they must deploy a combination of overall network security, device-based solutions, and handset personal controls. Personal controls on the device mean consumers can play an active role in the security of their mobile, by setting up blacklists and whitelists and reporting unwanted content or suspected fraud attacks directly to the operator.

Currently, many operators voluntarily police potential fraudsters, but as messaging services continue to grow and become more complex, operators should have an eye on a more comprehensive and robust range of security features installed at the network level. These include anti-spam, anti-spoof and anti-flooding tools, along with next-generation gateways that can detect abnormal patterns in messaging traffic, confirm legitimate senders, filter content and block suspicious messages. 

Innovative new services over SMS will find a place in the market – as SMS always has done. However, with the appropriate measures in place, operators can ensure that potential security risks are avoided; and their brand reputation with consumers is preserved. A secure channel can only help operators benefit from new SMS services and the very direct relationship with consumers that text messaging offers.

When subscribers feel assured that they are not vulnerable to fraudulent activity, they will feel more confident in using SMS services for a host of value-added services like banking, social media and targeted marketing. Ultimately, this could lead to the overall growth and development of the messaging sector, and the continued demand for mobile services spanning a variety of markets.

Stuart Reed is director of product marketing at Airwide Solutions