[asterisk-biz] [BULK] Re: Humbug Analytics - Falcon Release]

[Boaz Bechar]

Hi Gerald, All,

Many thanks for the reactions, and interest.

When we refer to the system being cloud-based we mean that the 
analytical engine and processing is handled on our servers rather than 
on the customers, the same way other hosted services are typically 
provided (web analytics, hosted pbxs, etc). We feel there are many 
advantages to this, especially in our case where we aim to provide fraud 
detection on the PBX level.

I just want to clarify that the Humbug cloud service itself does not 
connect to your AMI directly, rather we provide a downloadable agent 
(the "humbug-collector") which resides on the customers PBX, and 
connects to the manager locally (with a password unknown to Humbug) in 
read-only mode. The Humbug-collector is provided as open source, and 
essentially sends events that you want handled, fully encrypted to 
Humbug via API. Its possible to send events in other formats (i.e from 
the dialplan or AGI, etc) but we feel this is the best way to implement 
for most Asterisk users.

We understand well that carriers employ analytics and fraud detection on 
their traffic, and perhaps even have entire revenue-assurance teams to 
handle cases. On the other side of the scale we see millions of PBXs 
deployed, of all breeds and vendors, which essentially have no real 
access to this technology both from an implementation and ROI standpoint 
- leaving the unsuspecting user having to explain the $100,000 in 
international phone calls 
(http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9194041/Security_Manager_s_Journal_Slammed_with_a_100_000_phone_bill).

With an estimated $80 billion lost annually to telecom fraud, and nearly 
20% classified as "PBX/voicemail fraud", (CFCA 2009 global fraud loss 
survey) we feel the solution is not a matter of perfecting algorithms in 
existing systems, but rather of implementation, in which the analysis is 
on done carrier-independent, by a dedicated service in the cloud. And 
while we havent formally released the alerting system as part of the 
analytics suite yet, we feel that the traffic visibility which analytics 
provides is an important first line of defense.

I hope I clarified our intentions with the cloud service.

Kind Regards,
Boaz


Gerald Bove wrote:
> Can I have a little more information on how this works in the cloud? I was just checking out the site, and was very interested. I assumed it was just an app I ran either on the asterisk server, or on a separate server, but if this is "cloud" based, that kind of kills it.
> 
> Sending this type of information to a third party (a non-verified third part at that) is a big privacy concern. At the very least opening AMI or whatever this uses to pull the stats seems scary enough. 
> 
> I think your find that no real carrier will take this product seriously if that's how it works.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Chris Bagnall
> Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2011 7:11 AM
> To: 'Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion'
> Subject: [BULK] Re: [asterisk-biz] Humbug Analytics - Falcon Release
> Importance: Low
> 
>> Some months ago we posted an open invitation to our beta of Humbug
>> Analytics, and I thought I would share some of our progress since, as this 
>> may
>> be relevant to many of you.
> 
> I'm sure I can't be the only one who's thinking "this looks very nice, why 
> can't they release it as an app?" What's the obsession with "cloud" 
> everything these days?
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> Chris