Canada VoIP Phone Plan Draws Security Concerns

Cyber attacks on several Canadian federal government websites last week are leading to increasing concerns in regards to the Canadian government’s plan to change many of its landlines to Voice over Internet (VoIP) phones.

Shared Services Canada claims that over 120,000 traditional landlines have already gone through the change and have either been removed or replaced with VoIP technology. The Canadian government is aiming to save $29 million this year through the switch to VoIP.

David Skillicorn, with the School of Computing at Queen’s University, expresses concern over the ease to hack VoIP than traditional lines. “If you want to hack somebody’s local telephone call you have to climb up a pole and clip things onto the wire. The security technology is catching up, but slowly.”

The potential security weaknesses have led the Canadian federal departments reliant on secure communication as a high priority will not be switching their landlines in the near-future.