Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Are VoIP Calls Secured? If not, You can Make Them Easily!

The migration to VoIP service is seemingly growing with every rising sun and new dawn. People are being offered by los costing phoning facility to take care of their long distance and international phone calls, not worrying about huge phone bills anymore.

But, since VoIP phone service uses internet for completing its functional process, therefore, there are some vulnerabilities attached to it. Since, Internet is prone to unwanted attacks and hacking, it simultaneously puts VoIP service in the same danger sphere, sensitive to threats. Because of the growing need terrorism and hacking incidents, security issues for VoIP phone systems have hiked in these couple of years.

Exposure to Harmful Attacks

VoIP service - being internet-based –is susceptible to attacks from hackers, terrorist agencies or other illicit threats.

Professional hackers can infiltrate the network and easily listen to all your phone conversations, even embezzle with confidential data. Before you make up your mind to switch services and use VoIP, you better educate yourself completely on this matter and make sure that the VoIP service providing company you are signing up with offers save mode of communication and virus/hackers/spammers free facility with their advanced security systems.

VoIP networks are exposed to security risks ditto the other traditional IP networks and thus, security measures taken to secure an IP network are applicable to VoIP as well.

Shielding Your VoIP Systems

It is recommended that organizations and different firms using VoIP services should reinforce their security system even further by adopting a multi-layer ample security approach. The network can be easily broken down into secure zones, which are further protected by strong firewalls, and intrusion prevention system should be included as well.

A company can easily secure their communication network itself by activating strong firewalls, which are not easily penetrated in order to protect telephonic conversation, computers chats and servers, data.

Also, establish a highly secure system only allowing specific personnel to access after strict authentication using encryption methods, manage access to passwords and firewalls, and also enable access to encrypt data sent for privacy. You can also set up a call software to keep a trace of calls made or received, thus creating internal calls check and accountability.

Internal Security – high priority!

Any weak segment or fault in security system can lead to major attacks. Often companies fail to keep a daily check on their system and suffer in this regard.

Today, VoIP phone services are being taken up as the primary mode of communication, especially for internal business or in-house communications. This can also create an internal security problem, if overlooked.

Hence, it is thoughtful to keep your VoIP service calls encrypted so that the VoIP traffic moving internally within a corporate network set up is kept safe from attacks within the office premises.

Also, another way to keep this problem in check is by restrict access to the network by everyone. Keep it confined to authorized personnel.

Apart from that, ensure that all inbound VOIP traffic, flowing through a firewall is routed over via a gateway server. This way, direct connection to the internet is made less possible and thus, protects anyone from penetrating the security walls.

Securing your VoIP System is not difficult at all

Many corporation, nevertheless, fear that VoIP services are not secure phoning systems because of the high potential threats. However, it is not how it is perceived. You can easily secure your VoIP systems.

Securing VoIP systems is similar to securing your IP network. You can use strong anti-virus software, firewalls in order to protect your VoIP phone system and keep threats and hacking incidents at distance from your network.
VoIP security is not rocket science and can be achieved, only if you take the measures for it.

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