Security When Using VoIP is not to be Overlooked

When the world’s enterprises began sending and receiving important information via the Internet, their move to the future was soon followed by a plague of hackers seeking their valuable contents.

Michael Brandenburg, industry analyst at Mountain View, Calif.-based Frost & Sullivan Inc. said, "When very few [businesses] were using VoIP, there was security through obscurity," Indeed, when VoIP got its start, it was slow to be adopted and hackers didn’t pay it much attention, but now it is soon to be an industry standard.

Companies from the U.S to the U.K are seeing the cost benefit and ease of use in VoIP communication. As it garners more attention, the risks will rise. The problem lies in one of the many fundamental ways that VoIP differs from legacy phone systems.

In a time where voice was coming from a completely different place than the rest of the companies’ information, the enterprises’ most proprietary information was safe. But now that VoIP offers the transmitting of voice from the same servers that house this precious data, the security risk is much higher.

The best defense is to be aware of these changes and risks. Companies should be careful to follow security procedures that they are used to using with more sensitive information, and treat IP-based voice communication with just as much respect and caution. Passwords need to be better than the standard ‘1-2-3-4,’ and companies should invest in products that allow rosters to be made for IP conference calls in order to better see who has gained access to a call. These threats will only grow with the increased adoption of VoIP services.