Recording Login Failures

You can record login failures to detect possible service problems or fraud. For example, duplicate logins might indicate fraudulent usage. You can specify which login failures to record.

You can record login failures for any reason except using an unknown login name. For example, you can record events when customers try to:

Log in with the wrong password
Log in to an inactive service
Log in after exceeding their credit limit

You can also record successful logins, although doing this slows BRM performance.

To record login failures, specify the types of login failures you want to record in the pin_verify file and then load those preferences into the BRM database with the load_pin_verify command.

Note:

The load_pin_verify utility requires a configuration file. See "Connecting BRM Utilities" in BRM System Administrator's Guide.

To specify login failure types:

Edit the BRM_home/sys/data/config/pin_verify file, where BRM_home is the directory in which the BRM server software is installed. The pin_verify file includes examples and instructions.

You can make these types of changes:
- Edit a list of predefined types of login failures to specify which events you want to record and to modify their descriptions.
- Add custom types of login failures you want to record.
  
  Note:
  
  When you run load_pin_verify, it overwrites the existing preferences for recording customer login failures. If you are updating your preferences, you cannot load new preferences only. You must load complete sets of preferences each time you run the load_pin_verify utility.
Save the file.
Use the following command to run load_pin_verify utility:
```
load_pin_verify pin_verify_file 
```
For more information, see "load_pin_verify".
Stop and restart the CM.

To verify that the network elements were loaded, you can display the /config/verify object by using Object Browser, or by using the robj command with the testnap utility. See "Reading an Object and Writing Its Contents to a File" in BRM Developer's Guide.

Specifying the Account That Records Login Failures

BRM logs verification events against the root account by default. If you want to use a different account, do the following:

(Optional) Create an account specifically for logging verification events. You can create a CSR account or a dummy account.

If you create a dummy account, you should:
- Use a dummy package that includes no charge pricing and applies to accounts but not to any service.
- Use the internal payment method.
- Use any name and address you want. You have to enter something for name and address to create an account.
Open the CM configuration file (BRM_home/sys/cm/pin.conf).
Add this entry to the end of the file:
```
- fm_act account_name database_number /account 1 
```
where:
- account_name is the name of the account to which verification logging should go.
- database_number is the database number of the BRM database. By default, this number is 0.0.0.1.
This example sets an account called verify_acct to log verification events:
```
- fm_act verify_acct 0.0.0.1 /account 1 
```
Save the file.
Stop and restart the CM.

Viewing Login Failures

To view login failures, use Billing Care or Customer Center to open the root account or the account you specified in the CM configuration file.