A Turning Point in Telco Crime Risk Intelligence, The COMRiC Sector Report 2025 marks five years of relentless effort to build South Africa’s leading crime and risk intelligence body within the telecommunications industry. This inaugural edition offers a comprehensive overview of emerging threats, systemic vulnerabilities, and strategic responses shaping sector-wide resilience.

Telecommunications crime is no longer a siloed challenge. It touches everything from banking and energy to personal security and national infrastructure. South Africa’s telco sector continues to face complex, layered threats, including SIM swap fraud, subscription and identity fraud, ransomware attacks, and infrastructure sabotage. The illicit use of sim boxes, synthetic identity creation, and criminal bypassing of SIM authentication processes present evolving dangers.

Despite this, momentum is building. AI-led prevention, biometric authentication, regulatory pressure, and cross industry collaboration are showing measurable results. Between March 2024 and April 2025, reported telecom fraud cases declined thanks to improved monitoring, real-time analytics, and stronger inter-agency response coordination. Mobile network operators processed 3,600 SIM swap requests between January and April 2025, of which only 3 percent were confirmed fraudulent following deeper authentication checks.