The operator revenue loss to SMS grey route traffic will decline by 66% over the next 4 years; owing to the increasing adoption and efficiency of SMS firewalls, according to Juniper Research. The study predicts that these firewalls will save operators over $4.4 billion in lost business messaging revenue between 2023 and 2027, by identifying fraudulent traffic and blocking it in real-time.

These savings will be driven by the ability of SMS firewalls to detect sources of fraudulent traffic earlier and more efficiently through the increasing use of machine learning. By 2027, the report predicts that less than 1% of business messaging traffic will be attributable to grey routes, compared to 4.3% in 2023.

However, as the role of business messaging evolves, the report urges operators to develop messaging firewalls to be deployed as part of a larger security value chain that protects operators over more channels than SMS alone. The report anticipates that RCS messaging will be a crucial technology over the next 4 years, and firewall vendors must tailor fraud detection and mitigation services to this technology.

In turn, the report identified the Security-as-a-Service model as a key strategy for future firewall development. This business model includes providing managed security tools over multiple operator‑led technologies. It predicts that vendors will soon compete on the completeness of their multi‑format firewalls, including the efficiency of AI-based fraud detection solutions over multiple messaging technologies.

“Operators must have the most effective tools to identify and mitigate future methods of messaging fraud regardless of messaging channel. However, they must outsource fraud detection services to experienced third-party solutions providers that benefit from the wealth of data that they derive from the traffic over multiple operator core networks,” commented report author Elisha Sudlow-Poole.