What Microsoft 365 Apps for Business Come Included?
“Telephone system hacking is on the rise and it’s not just the large corporates that are the target. Smaller businesses, which often do not have sophisticated security measures in place, are easy prey for hackers” explains Lee Butler, Director at Town & Country.
“Telephone hacking happens as a result of someone breaching the security parameters on your system to access outgoing lines to make international or premium rate calls, which can quickly run up bills of hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds.”
To help minimise the risk for their clients, Town & Country has launched an email alert notification service that works 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, which is activated when system parameters have been breached. This notifies both Town & Country and the client so that the legitimacy of any irregular calls can be verified and an immediate stop put on the system if it has been the target of fraudulent activity.
“This new alert service came into its own recently when one of our clients found themselves with a burst of unusual telephone activity out of normal working hours and to international numbers, prompting the receipt of our alert email.”
“We immediately contacted them to query the potential security breach and following investigation, it came to light that their telephone system was being accessed by an external source to make multiple international calls. We were able to immediately secure the phone system by barring outgoing calls and liaised with their telephone supplier who were then able to trace the breach and return the system to normal” explains Lee.
Without the email alert system, the client would have been hit with a telephone bill in the thousands of pounds, which they would have been liable to pay unless they had adequate insurance cover in place to indemnify them against financial loss resulting from the breach.
As part of the new notification system, Town & Country can also set up alerts on business mobiles to prevent customers from incurring additional costs related to data usage and non-standard calls to premium and international numbers, particularly worthwhile when travelling abroad.
“As we are seeing regularly in the news, cyber security is a hot topic and incidents are likely to rise significantly in the coming months. Introducing the alert system to protect our clients’ business operations is a key step for us and one we’ve already seen work in practice to save a number of clients from situations, which could easily have had disastrous financial implications for them.” concluded Lee.
Town & Country Communications are Dorset’s only independent, family run telecommunications business. Established for over twenty years, they manage the telecommunications (landlines or mobile) for a number of the area’s leading companies including Churchill Retirement Living, Britannia Parking and Steele Raymond.
