Illegal Interception of Cell Phone Calls

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Once again the Ponemon Institute is offering an interesting survey – this time regarding cell phone voice call interception. According to the survey of 75 U.S. companies and 107 senior executives, it costs U.S. corporations on average $1.3M USD each time a corporate secret is revealed to unauthorized parties. How often do these secrets become revealed? According to the survey, 18 percent of respondents estimate such losses to occur weekly or more frequently, 61 percent at least monthly and 90 percent at least annually.

“Cellular communications are ubiquitous in business and will only become more prevalent as worker mobility grows, yet the risk to information security is often overlooked,” said Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder, Ponemon Institute. “Common scenarios, such as conference calls attended by executives dialing in on their cell phone, may pose a serious threat to highly sensitive personal or corporate information if proper precautions are not taken to ensure business information integrity.”

Common scenarios where sensitive information could be lost during a cell phone voice call include: senior leaders participating in conference calls; overseas cell phone use when communicating with a home office; an external lawyer requesting proprietary information; establishing a new account that requires personal information, accounting staff discussing an earnings press release.

The Ponemon study revealed that while awareness of the potential problem is high (71 percent stating that confidential information is communicated over cell phones in conference calls, 80 percent when traveling to countries known to be high risk for voice interception and 83 percent when discussing information with professionals such as legal representatives), few organizations have deployed comprehensive protection.

The Ponemon study was sponsored by Cellcrypt.