RAG TV Season 3

RAG TV Season 3: Episode Guide and Recordings

S3E18 – 5 May 2021

End of season omnibus: regular RAG contributors Nixon Wampamba of MTN Nigeria, Tony Sani, co-creator of the RAG Wangiri Blockchain, and Geoff Ibbett, custodian of the RAG Leakage Catalogue, join host Eric Priezkalns for a wide-ranging debate about risk priorities in the style of a RAG ‘wise heads’ conference panel. The industry veterans also review the results of the leakage coverage benchmarking study that Geoff has just completed with the assistance of comms providers worldwide.

S3E17 – 28 April 2021

Michele Zarri talks about the impact of 5G on risk management, drawing on his experience as GSMA Technical Director and leader of multiple mobile standardization teams prior to assuming his new role overseeing the technology evolution of Mobileum’s product portfolio.

Presenters Eric Priezkalns and David Rogers also discuss the UK government announcement that it will impose new laws to tighten security around networked devices like handsets, smart TVs and smart watches.

S3E16 – 21 April 2021

We take a deep look at wangiri fraud using data contributed by 80 telcos plus many other sources of fraud intelligence. Why do some telcos block millions of wangiri calls each month? Which number ranges are most abused? Tony Sani, creator of the RAG Wangiri Blockchain, answers these questions and more from the audience.

S3E15 – 14 April 2021

Dion Price, CEO of Trustonic, discusses the ways comms providers can close the ‘digital divide’ by giving more people access to the internet without risking increased theft of handsets and other networked devices. Smart credit risk management and robust device security are key to meeting social and legal obligations without encouraging a rise in crime.

Presenters Eric and Lee also discuss impact of data breaches on share prices and how this appears to be worse for telcos and technology firms.

S3E14 – 7 April 2021

Joseph Nderitu draws on his experience as a business advisor to explain how the leading mobile money providers are creating APIs that allow any business to build new offerings like insurance, savings, gambling and rent collection around the ability to access a customer’s mobile money wallet. How should telcos upgrade the skills of staff and enhance their automated controls to further mitigate risk?

Regular presenters Eric and Lee also discuss a new code of conduct that has encouraged Australian telcos to block 11 million wangiri calls and 44 million spoofed calls since December 2020.

S3E13 – 31 March 2021

Emmy Léger of Araxxe has deep experience of the business of testing for fraud and billing accuracy. She educated the RAG TV crew about A2P SMS bypass fraud, drawing on the data collated by her business by sending millions of test SMS messages across 106 different countries. The scale of fraud is high on every continent, and was found to be worth over USD500bn globally during 2020.

Regular presenters Eric and Lee also discuss the security of undersea cables and whether governments and the private sector need to do more to safeguard vital infrastructure.

S3E12 – 24 March 2021

Eric Burger, Georgetown University Professor and former White House advisor, talks about the anti-fraud regulations imposed during his tenure as CTO of the FCC, and if they will be adopted in other regions. Will other regulators choose to adopt an approach to verifying the origin of calls that depends on a central authority? What are the implications for international traffic and do the current US rules leave room for compromise?

Regular presenters Eric and Lee also discuss a worrying story about SMS hijacking involving a gaping flaw in how data managed by NetNumber is used to determine the routing of SMS messages. SMS is definitely not the 2FA the world needs!

S3E11 – 17 March 2021

Brendan Cleary, CEO of Cellusys, has spent his entire career enhancing the security that surrounds network signals protocols like SS7 and Diameter. Brendan explains how vulnerabilities are exploited by criminals and other bad actors to steal money and engage in espionage, and why there are still very many networks that have not hardened security by implementing firewalls.

Regular presenters Eric and Lee also discuss the shocking case of a British telco systematically overcharging hundreds of thousands of customers over a 15 year period whilst still receiving clean audit reports from their billing accuracy auditors.

S3E10 – 10 March 2021

Kerry Evans of BT and Jayaprakash Devaraj of Vodafone Qatar walk through the RAG Leakage Coverage Study under the expert supervision of Geoff Ibbett, consultant at Symmetry Solutions and creator of the RAG Leakage Catalogue. They compare their experience of monitoring and measuring all 25 categories of leakage, providing many rapid-fire observations about the challenges they have faced and the controls they have implemented.

S3E9 – 3 March 2021

The spoofing of calling line identification (CLI), also known as caller ID, is exploited by fraudsters around the world. Pedro Rabacal, CTO of Vodacom Mozambique, and Jeffrey Ross of GBSD Technologies and 1Route discuss the background, issues and new solutions that are in development.

Presenters Eric Priezkalns and Lee Scargall also discuss the progress of RAG TV to date and the desire to get back to holding events in the real world!

S3E8 – 24 February 2021

Veteran consultant Moly McMillan shares stories from a career which has included leadership of the revenue assurance functions at Skype, Millicom Group and Virgin Media. With experience of an OTT provider, an international group of mobile operators and a multiplay cable company Moly has since gone on to become a business advisor to organizations in other verticals, applying assurance principles in very different areas such as digital currencies, asset management and property technology.

Presenters Eric Priezkalns and Lee Scargall also discuss a rather brazen attempt to copy the RAG Wangiri Blockchain.

S3E7 – 17 February 2021

Lawyer, Certified Fraud Examiner and forensic investigator Jacqueline Fick draws on her experience of telecoms operators and cybercrime to highlight the similarities between the spread of international telecoms fraud and the spread of a virus. Jacqueline also shares her views on the impact of home working on the risk landscape for communications providers.

Presenters Eric Priezkalns and Lee Scargall discuss how the launch of Elon Musk’s Starlink, and other similar satellite based ISPs, will affect the internet landscape.

S3E6 – 10 February 2021

Revenue assurance innovator Shahid Ishtiaq explores the impact of 5G on traditional controls and why SQL could not support the evolving role of his function. His model uses robotic process automation (RPA) to extend the controls paradigm by understanding all of a customer’s interactions with the provider.

Presenters Eric Priezkalns and Lee Scargall, referencing the overthrow of the government in Myanmar, discuss the working priorities for senior risk leaders in a telco when there is major upheaval like a revolution.

S3E5 – 3 February 2021

Bartek Bukowski, Governance and Insights Manager at BT, talks about the challenge of performing a thorough root cause analysis (RCA) and then ensuring issues do not recur. There are plenty of methods that have been developed to pursue RCA, but what sounds good in theory can be difficult to deliver in practice.

Presenters Eric Priezkalns and Lee Scargall discuss collaboration in the industry with some good and bad examples of how to do it!

S3E4 – 27 January 2021

Author and analyst Edward Finegold examines the risks around digital identity, as more of who we are, and what we own, is maintained online. Who is liable when an account is hijacked or an interruption of services affects revenues? Recent events have intensified demands for legal change, but providers already face tough moral decisions.

Our hosts Eric Priezkalns and Lee Scargall discuss the reporting of SIM swap numbers in the UK press and how the facts seem to break down as you start to dig a little!

S3E3 – 20 January 2021

Our guest Nixon Wampamba, General Manager for Revenue Assurance at MTN Nigeria, discusses the reasons why some of the best risk mitigation controls are innovated by African comms providers.

Hosts Eric Priezkalns and Lee Scargall talk about the implications of the facial recognition laws recently passed in Portland, Oregon, and the broader implications of local privacy laws at internet scale.

S3E2 – 13 January 2021

Our guests Bill Leahy and Nev Phillips of Symmetry Solutions join us to discuss Personalised Recommendation and Order (PRO) solutions and why the automated calculation of the best tariff plan according to each customer’s historic usage can increase revenues and reduce complaints.

Hosts Eric Priezkalns and Lee Scargall also talk about the results of the recent Commsrisk poll of the most/least respected RAFM collaboration organizations and take a look at the management of bad debt by comms providers.

S3E1 – 6 January 2021

Regular hosts Eric Priezkalns and Lee Scargall return for the RAG review of 2020 and with all the news since the end of Season 2. The news topics debated included Covid, industry consolidation and China, robocalls and mobile money. We also discussed the RAG Hall of Fame and the results of the RAG RAFM Survey which showed comms providers and customers are collectively using USD142bn per year to comms fraud and leakage!