Local telco Maxis has announced that it has deployed an integrated AI-powered network firewall for both voice and SMS traffic. While the telco made the announcement today, it said that it was operational since last month, adding to its multi-tiered security protocols.
With the firewall being powered by AI, Maxis says this allows for 24/7 monitoring of international SMS and voice traffic entering Malaysia. Spam and scams from outside disguised as local traffic gets blocked, as well as those coming from unofficial channels. This protects users from scam attempts using fake sender IDs, on both the SMS and voice call fronts.
If all of this sounds a bit familiar, this is because Maxis made a similar announcement in October last year. At the time, the telco announced that it partnered with India’s Globe Teleservices for essentially what’s being implemented. With the latter company providing the machine learning-based firewall, it would also be capable of identifying and blocking fraudulent activities such as SIM farms.
As an aside, Maxis also mentions that, since the end of January, the telco has implemented inter-operator spoofing checks with for mobile network operators. Part of the process includes validating caller numbers directly with the respective operator to detect masked numbers.
