Panasonic Systems Network Europe (PSNE) announced that it had entered into a technical and commercial relationship with The Callista Group, developers of the Control Phreak voice switch security application, to enhance the security of Panasonic voice solutions and applications.

Phreaking and PBX Fraud
Dial-Through fraud, also known as ‘Phreaking', is big business, on the increase at an alarming rate and is often linked to organised crime. Once targeted and attacked, owners of compromised voice switches can be left facing huge phone bills as a result of the massive volume of illegal calls these ‘phreakers' generate. Faced with bankruptcy, many owners of compromised voice systems have been forced to seek compensation from resellers, integrators, manufacturers and even service providers.

Roger Ansin, Chairman of the Callista Group Ltd said, "Telephone systems are just as vulnerable to hacker attacks as PCs and while most companies go to great lengths to protects their LANs and PCs from these attacks with firewalls and anti-virus systems, they leave their phone systems completely unprotected. Phreakers usually strike after hours, at the weekend, or on Public Holidays when attacks are least likely to be detected. However, your telecoms service provider will still expect you to pay for all the illegal calls routed through your phone system. Control Phreak stops all this activity in its tracks while leaving you in total control of your phone system. You decide how liberal or restrictive the rules governing your call traffic will be so that the legitimate phone traffic of your business is never compromised."

"It's not enough to know that an attack has happened and a crime committed", said Steve Gerrard, UK Marketing Manager at PSNE "By that time it's too late and the damage has been done. All Panasonic's NCP and TDE communications solutions and our TVM messaging appliances already feature a challenge / response security mechanism however, incorporating Control Phreak means that you won't have to manually monitor retrospective alerts in fact, you won't have to monitor anything".

Killing illegal call traffic

Interfacing and integrated into the Panasonic TDE and NCP voice switch platforms Control Phreak runs in real time actively killing illegal call traffic instantly. Users decide how liberal or restrictive the flow of call traffic will be through their phone system and constantly remain in control of the rules governing this flow so that the legitimate phone traffic of their business is never compromised while their phone system remains completely safe from phreakers. "Switch hacking and toll fraud is a real and present danger that thrives on the lack of understanding within the market", added Gerrard, "In partnering with Callista, Panasonic is taking a positive stance against this type of crime and further securing our intelligent voice solutions for the benefit of our customers".

Panasonic also welcomes The Callista Group Ltd into their Solutions Partner Programme, announced in September 2010. "As a global corporation we have been working with Callista for quite a while", said Gerrard. Adding, "We have been pioneering this anti-phreaking solution with Callista in other parts of the world, now we are now in a position to offer this secure communications solution to UK customers."