Business VoIP Provider Improves Security

The proliferation of VoIP adoption in businesses has been quite the boon, but unfortunately popularity does not always translate into security. While many VoIP providers provide for secure transmissions amongst colleagues and clients, there are equally as many firms left unprotected against lurking threats.

An issue growing in prevalence is VoIP toll fraud, which occurs when one’s phone number is hijacked and used to make costly calls to charge-per-minute international phone numbers. Often times the fraud occurs due to poor configuration, because a provider will install the PBX in a client’s local network there is a lack of urgency in regard to security.

Euphoria Telecom CTO Conrad De Wet noted, "A simple, brute force attack can leave the onsite PBX hacked. The PBX provider normally blames the network provider for a lack of network security. In smaller businesses, there is often no network company and the PBX is protected by a basic ADSL router. This is a sure recipe for toll fraud to occur; it's only a matter of time.”

Due to apathetic security protocols, passwords and sensitive information are sent and received over unsecured channels making them easy pickings for an eager wrongdoer.  And, as De Wet illustrated, “With the correct credentials in hand, there is little administrators can do."

Euphoria Telecom is meeting the problem head-on with recent major upgrades to its cloud PBX infrastructure. The improvements offer increased configuration ability, to ensure that appropriate business calls can take place while preventing the threat of toll fraud.

"We can set the maximum number of calls on a PBX level, on a local calls per extension level, and most importantly, we can limit the number of simultaneous calls internationally on a per extension level to prevent a large number of international calls being called from one extension in the event of toll fraud," illustrated Euphoria CEO George Golding.

Via a Web interface a business has the freedom to configure settings to appropriate levels, and the system automatically monitors call levels. Any suspicious behavior results in the system sending notifications to Euphoria as well as the client.

Euphoria Telecom is one business VoIP provider with fraud front of mind. And, while this burgeoning technology is growing in popularity, it presents an easy target for evil-doers if the proper precautions are not put in place.  

Edited by Stefania Viscusi