Integrating Asterisk with InRule to Detect Suspicious Calls

Monitoring telecommunications systems is of a crucial importance. Nowadays, PBX software packages can be configured to allow the storage of Call Detail Records in a database. There is a permanent need to analyze those records and allow business owners to detect PBX misuse from inside and outside the company. The word "misuse" covers an employee making too many personal phone calls, a salesman making fewer phone calls than expected, a client making an excessive number of phone calls, and other suspicious calls. A data-mining package or any other analytical tool would not be as efficient because it would report what happened when it is too late to take action. In this article, we integrate Asterisk with a rule-based engine called InRule. Asterisk will consult InRule whenever a call is about to be made and thus take appropriate actions.