Why Business VoIP Providers Should Be Security Conscious

Business VoIP is woefully misunderstood for its voice quality in that too many are under the impression that it is inferior. Broadband has improved over the years, so VoIP has improved as well. Today, packets are able to travel through the Internet extremely fast, delivering crisp, clear VoIP at a fraction of the cost of traditional telephony.

In spite of misunderstandings, some decision makers feel that VoIP is insecure, but the truth of the matter is there are plenty of sophisticated defense measures like firewalls, redundancy and encryption to ensure solid, reliable security. VoIP is safe in the same way online banking is safe, as they share the same data lines.

Of course, there are proper security measures to put in place to ensure that VoIP is, in fact, ultra secure, and recent headlines put emphasis on securing VoIP lines.

Vigliance Networks recently announced that Israel-based public transportation company, Egged deployed its Security Intelligence Platform to better protect its IP communications against threats, vulnerabilities, cyber attacks and toll fraud.

Business VoIP fraud is a very real potential problem for any company and can be destructive. While protection from business VoIP fraud has improved significantly through the years, hackers are still at large and they are constantly coming up with new schemes and angles to break-in and wreak havoc. That is why it is up to businesses and enterprises to protect their VoIP borders in addition to their data networks.

Business VoIP is especially susceptible to fraud because of its inherent relationship to high-speed Internet connections. The Internet offers hackers both an easier point of entry than a traditional landline based phone as well as the possibility to sell more minutes.

“As we work directly with the public, it’s imperative that we’re able to connect with customers and ensure continuous service over our unified communications network,” said Chen Amram, CTO of Egged in a statement. “Since the threats we were experiencing were UC specific, we saw the need for a more advanced solution. Vigilance Networks’ Security Intelligence Platform enables us to monitor our VoIP network to ensure privacy, prevent information leaks and toll fraud, and tightly manage security policies. As a result, we’re able to ensure business continuity as we continue our daily operations of running over 3,000 buses, without worrying about cyber security.”

There are some best practices that organizations can implement to avoid business VoIP fraud, including ensuring that all manufacturer default passwords for system administration are changed promptly, using lengthy and complex alphanumeric passwords. In addition to secure passwords, organizations should set and enforce standards for complex passwords for voice message mailboxes. Require period password resets for these mailboxes.

VoIP is a complex technology and this complexity can lead to all types of vulnerabilities, however taking the proper precautions and using a few simple solutions will ensure that business VoIP security is nothing but a concern, not a reality.