Cerebrus Solutions Wins Multi-million Dollar Deal with MTN South Africa to Provide Fraud Management Solution

Cerebrus Solutions, a leading provider of fraud management solutions for the global telecoms industry, today announced that MTN South Africa, part of the MTN Group, has selected Cerebrus' flagship product CerebrusRE for its fraud management solution.

MTN South Africa Licenses CerebrusRE

25 November 2002, London, UK - Cerebrus Solutions, a leading provider of fraud management solutions for the global telecoms industry, today announced that MTN South Africa, part of the MTN Group, has selected Cerebrus' flagship product CerebrusRE for its fraud management solution.

The agreement follows a comprehensive review process involving thirteen competing solution providers. MTN South Africa selected Cerebrus because of its unique application of neural network technology to fight fraud combined with its ability to provide a complete view of fraudulent behaviour across current and next generation fixed and wireless networks.

Telecom fraud is a growing concern for telecom operators, costing them approximately one to five percent of turnover. Cerebrus uniquely combines advanced neural network technologies with traditional rules and thresholds techniques to identify new, unpredictable fraud patterns in near real time. It is the most robust and reliable telecoms fraud solution currently on the market providing efficient and accurate fraud protection for telecom operators worldwide.

With 77 telecom operators in the region, Africa is a growing market for Cerebrus. South Africa is by far Africa's most developed telecom market, with annual revenues from telecom services projected to exceed $7 billion in 2002. The country's teledensity is 11,2 with more than nine million mobile subscribers and in excess of 2,4 million Internet subscribers. MTN South Africa is the second African telecom operator to license Cerebrus' technology following its agreement with Moroccan telecom operator Medi Telecom.

"Left unchecked, fraudsters can have a corrosive impact on our bottom line," says Megan Ashman, MTN South Africa acting head of finance. "The increasingly sophisticated methods used by fraudsters make rules-only fraud management solutions redundant. Cerebrus' neural network technology helps level the playing field by providing us with an intelligent and evolving tool that can address today's and tomorrow's threats."

Bill McHale, Cerebrus Solutions CEO says: "By helping to fight fraud in an increasingly sophisticated telecoms market, Cerebrus allows MTN to focus firmly on its core business of providing safe, secure telecom services. Our agreement with MTN further endorses our belief that neural networks are the only way to effectively address fraud. We look forward to extending this relationship by working with the rest of the MTN Group."

Concilium Technologies, a leading supplier of telecommunications solutions throughout sub-Saharan Africa and Cerebrus' channel partner in South Africa, will support the installation of Cerebrus and will provide first and second line support services to MTN.

"Together with Cerebrus we have developed a powerful fraud solutions team for African telecom operators," says Steve Alves, Concilium Technologies managing director. "Our extensive understanding of the issues affecting African telecom operators, Cerebrus' leading position in fraud management solutions and our reputation for providing the very best in integration and support, make us the logical choice for customers."

Cerebrus' neural network mimics the human brain by learning to analyse new information based on experience. The neural network monitors patterns of caller activity continually and learns to ignore recognised normal universal and individual customers' caller behaviour and can quickly detect patterns of behaviour associated with fraud. This unique ability is called behavioural anomaly detection.

As soon as Cerebrus detects a potential act of fraud, a 'case' is automatically created and the fraud analyst alerted. Cerebrus provides the analyst with all the detailed information required to make an informed decision. A fully featured case analysis and management package enables the analyst to assess the likelihood of the fraud being more extensive, identifying organisers and modus operandi. Decisive action can then be taken to limit the scale of the fraud. Cerebrus reduces significantly the number of false alarms and decreases fraud analysts' workload and therefore operational costs.

Cerebrus offers a flexible and scalable platform that provides solutions for all network sizes from less than 500 000 call data records per day through to hundreds of millions. It is vendor independent and capable of accepting data streams from any appropriate source.

About Cerebrus Solutions

Cerebrus Solutions is the leading provider of neural network-based fraud management solutions for the telecoms industry. The company also offers a variety of solutions that solve revenue assurance problems for wireline, wireless and cable operators.

The company is headquartered just north of London, England, has customers on five continents and markets its products globally in conjunction with Agilent Technologies. Argo Global Capital and Agilent are the major investors in the company. For further information, please visit www.CerebrusSolutions.com.

About MTN South Africa

MTN is a South African cellular network operator and is listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange under the umbrella of the M-Cell Group. Launched in 1994, MTN now has close on five million subscribers. MTN's GSM network is one of the largest in the world. It has approximately 4000 sites covering 19 200km of road, 900 000km2 of land and providing access to 94.5% of South Africa's population. MTN owns service provider M-Tel and has interests in I-Talk Cellular, Leaf Wireless and New Bucks Holdings.

About Concilium Technologies

Concilium Technologies (Pty) Ltd was established in November 1999 as a wholly owned South African company. The company was formed by the management and staff of the former Hewlett-Packard Test and Measurement Company, bringing a wealth of telecommunications expertise into the new company.

The company currently employs a full complement of factory trained sales and application support engineers within its purpose built facility in TechnoPark Centurion.

Through its close relationship with leading technology companies such as Cerebrus Solutions and Agilent Technologies, Concilium is in a unique position to provide solutions throughout the telecommunications market, from new product development right through to support of telecommunications systems employed in the field. These solutions cover corporate intranets right through to national telecommunications networks.