TELECOMMUNICATIONS

Insurance for Corporate Phone Fraud: Travelers Insurance Co. has begun selling an insurance policy for telephone fraud, a problem that authorities say costs the phone industry and corporate customers more than $1 billion a year. Travelers’ policy, one of the first on the market, covers a corporate phone customer for as much as $1 million in losses resulting from unauthorized break-ins to its office phone system. Most corporate phone systems today have a feature that allows certain employees who are on the road to dial into the system and use a private code number to get an outside line and make a phone call. The company is then billed directly. But electronic thieves have been deciphering these access codes and using them to break into company systems and make calls all over the world.