Security, Fraud and RA Losses Worth $149bn in 2021 per Survey of Comms Providers

By Eric Priezkalns

8 Nov 2021

Education & Conferences

Security breaches caused most leakage for comms providers, whilst RA-style leakages were worth almost double the value of fraud.

The report on the big revenue assurance, fraud management and cybersecurity (RAFMCS) survey of the Risk & Assurance Group (RAG) is now available. The survey collated answers from 185 RAFMCS professionals working for comms providers to come up with the following estimates for global leakage during 2021:

security breaches cost USD53bn in total and averaged 3.3% of revenues
RA-style leakages cost USD43bn in total and averaged 2.7% of revenues
fraud that targeted comms providers cost USD22bn in total and averaged 1.4% of revenues
customers lost another USD29bn as a result of frauds using comms services
comms providers paid another USD3bn as compensation to customers for fraud
putting these together, global addressable operating leakage was USD149bn for the year

You can watch me giving a 14-minute video presentation of the main results, with all the key diagrams, immediately below. Keep scrolling down for the full report, which can also be downloaded in PDF format by clicking here or from RAG’s survey webpage.

Eric Priezkalns http://revenueprotect.com

During his career, Eric has been a Director of Risk Management for a national telco, the Chief Executive of the Risk & Assurance Group, a Chief Marketing Officer for a software business, a consultant, a public speaker and the publisher of Commsrisk since its launch in 2006. Look here for more about the history of Commsrisk and the role played by Eric.

The comms providers that Eric has worked for include Qatar Telecom, Cable & Wireless, T‑Mobile, Sky and Worldcom. In addition to his proficiency at speaking about the current scamdemic, Eric is also a qualified chartered accountant and a subject matter expert in consumer protection, enterprise risk management, fraud prevention, data integrity and billing accuracy. Eric was the lead author of Revenue Assurance: Expert Opinions for Communications Providers, published by CRC Press. He can be reached through the contact form on this website.

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