Commsrisk has enjoyed extraordinary audience figures during the second half of 2020, and November maintained this strong run with traffic from over 150 countries. India, the USA and UK continue to deliver enormous audiences that place them in a tier well above all other countries, but there were some interesting developments in the second-tier national audiences, including unexpected rises in the number of visitors from China and Egypt. There has also been continued growth in visitor numbers from some of the more developed markets in West and East Africa. Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda and Tanzania all now deliver audiences of comparable size to those found in most Western European countries.
The two most popular articles received far more views than all the others. It was obvious why so much attention was directed towards the summary of the Risk & Assurance Group’s RAFM Survey, as the results highlighted the huge unrealized potential of risk management for comms providers. It was less certain that current professionals would want to read about the accomplishments of some of our discipline’s founding fathers and mothers, including some who have sadly passed away. So it was especially pleasing to see how much appreciation was felt for the lifetime contributions made by ten champions of telecoms risk management. I am glad that Commsrisk readers want the full story of where our discipline came from, as well as wanting to know where we are headed in future. It is my belief that you must respect your roots to harvest the most fruit.
Commsrisk traffic has risen from almost all countries but Israel is an exception to the rule, with Israeli visitor numbers dropping precipitously in recent years. This remained the case in November even though one of the top 10 articles was about cybercrime and the lax signaling security of an Israeli operator. Israel has a small population but is also home to many enterpreneurs who should want to develop ways to capture the billions of dollars of leakage described by the RAG RAFM Survey and corroborated by stories in Israeli newspapers. The country also has enemies and needs to protect its telcos. This website used to receive a disproportionate amount of traffic from the Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliya, which was the former base of cVidya, an RA vendor that was later bought and dismembered by Amdocs. Their representatives routinely claimed to make breakthroughs in the management of telco risks and they received numerous awards because of their oversized marketing budget. However, disappointed investors dumped cVidya for a fraction of the amount they poured into it; the Israeli press described cVidya’s disposal as a ‘yard sale’. I hope this is a salutary reminder that long-term winners keep finding new ways to take the lead, whilst those who rely on loud but empty hype can rapidly disappear without a trace. Irresponsible marketing by one business may now have permanently reduced the appetite for telco risk management across a whole country.
Here are the top ten Commsrisk articles during November, as ranked by unique pageviews.
- Survey Says Unrealized Value of RAFM Is $142bn
- The Hall of Fame: Honoring Ten Champions of the Telecoms Risk Community
- All Leakages and Frauds Suffered by Comms Providers, Ranked by Value
- Telco CEO Charged with Fraud after 10-Year Investigation
- Why Call Spoofing Will Not Be Stopped by Digital Signatures
- Zimbabwe Chooses GVG for National RA System
- A Defense of STIR/SHAKEN
- All UK Mobile Operators Offer Anti-Fraud API That Confirms If Phone Numbers Belong to Users
- Should Telcos Use Data to Recommend Better Deals to Existing Customers?
- SS7 Used to Hack Messages of 20 Cryptocurrency Execs
