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Security Scrutinized In The Phone Industry
Doug Caverly
Staff Writer
2006-09-11
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
Due to several recent security issues, phone companies are coming under the magnifying glass. In particular, the issue of "pretexting" - "a scam where unauthorized individuals pretend to be someone they're not to obtain personal information" - has gotten a lot of attention.
"Private investigators and con artists have been using this technique for years not just to obtain phone records, but also to get access to bank records, credit card information and other sensitive information," wrote CNET's Marguerite Reardon.
Reardon cited several other examples of security issues, including the time "when news reports pointed to Web sites where customer records could be openly purchased." On the subject of pretexting, she wrote, "Other industries are also vulnerable to pretexting scams, but experts say the telecommunications industry lags behind them in protecting customer information."
Sherwin Siy, staff counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, was quoted in Reardon's article. "Phone companies are between a rock and a hard place," he said. "They want to make it easy for you to get your phone records, but they don't want to make it too easy, so that criminals can get the information as well."
Others weren't as forgiving as Siy. "There's no doubt that the telecommunications industry has been extremely lax in authenticating customers," stated Robert Douglas, an information security consultant. "There's an institutional perception of ‘What's the big deal. It's just phone records.' And that has to change."
Mark Marchand, the spokesman for Verizon Communications, was given an opportunity to defend the industry's practices. "We are continually changing our methods," he said. "We have folks dedicated to security who stay on top of new methods for securing our customers' data."
Tag: Phone industry
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About the Author:
Doug is a staff writer for SecurityProNews, InternetFinancialNews, SearchNewz, and WebProNews.
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