Xura Inc., announced that it is working with Telkomsel, to help protect the operator’s more than 153 million subscribers from SMS spam.

Telkomsel selected Xura’s Spam Shield to control messaging in their network, to automatically detect unsolicited messaging campaigns and block unwanted messages protecting subscribers from the majority of threats with dynamic detection techniques.

There is an increasing and ever-changing flood of spam and fraud traffic that has proven difficult for many operators to detect and control. With only basic SMS filtering systems in place, 30% of spam messages were previously going undetected on the Telkomsel network, and a more advanced detection capability for unsolicited messages was critical to bring this figure down.

Spam Shield provides spam detection and dynamic policy control, with a learning process that continually adjusts to the constantly changing threat posed by spam to subscribers and operators’ brand and reputation. This learning process results in an ever improving and effective solution that evolves in real-time – as do the characteristics of spam – modifying spam filters and policy control as appropriate.

Xura already had a strong relationship with Telkomsel, having installed SMSC and MMSC’s for the operator in the past, as well as providing award winning, innovative, revenue generating services such as network initiated Collect SMS. Spam Shield with grey route management was selected following a successful Proof of Concept for its ability to cover both mobile originated and mobile terminated spam protection nationwide, with a highly scalable solution.

Telkomsel’s vice president of IT VAS and Corporate Service Solution and Management, Asep Y Septiana, said: “Spam Shield has reduced the effort and human intervention previously required to operate and manage the filtering, because there is no need to manually configure filtering rules. This makes it easier for Telkomsel to protect subscribers, as well as ensure the timely delivery of critical messaging services, such as PIN notifications, while correctly monetising commercial use of messaging. Spam Shield’s ability to filter out grey route messaging enables us to sell SMS advertising via the appropriate channels, and monetise OTT related messages through the correct wholesale channels. This not only opens up new revenue streams for us, but also provides subscribers with a better overall experience and greater satisfaction.”

“With Xura’s Spam Shield, Telkomsel has been able to implement advanced message filtering that can detect up to eight times more spam-related messages than traditional filtering techniques available on the market, including spam received via IP / OTT messaging services also. It provides the flexibility needed to separate false positive spam messages, offering automatic SMS campaign detection and spam blocking based on the system’s heuristic algorithm needed to combat dynamic spam threats,” said David Khoo, SVP & managing director for APAC at Xura. “All of this can be viewed and tracked via our spam reporting tool, Xura Analytics, so Telkomsel are able to analyse and act as needed, and in real-time.”

Telkomsel are also utilising Xura Analytics, which provides a flexible GUI, for reporting and analysis. Spam Shield went live on Telkomsel’s network in May this year – inside a four month deployment schedule, providing nationwide coverage for Telkomsel’s 153 million prepaid and post-paid subscribers.

To find out more about Xura’s network security products including Spam Shield and Signaling Fraud Management, please visit www.xura.com or email: contactxura@xura.com.

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