VoIP 'less susceptible to fraud' than traditional phones, expert says
VoIP 'less susceptible to fraud' than traditional phones, expert says
According to a telecommunications expert, VoIP systems are ‘less susceptible’ to fraud than traditional analogue phones, laying security fears to rest.
Business development director at South Africa-based business telephony organisation Connection Telecom, Rob Lith, explained that hackers looking to breach VoIP security would find it far harder than breaching an analogue phone system.
This is due to the fact that analogue phones are extremely susceptible to illegal activities such as toll fraud – which is the avoidance of paying for long-distance phone calls. Hackers are well aware of the various methods that can be used to carry out toll fraud on analogue phones, such as the tapping of a telephone hook to simulate the pulse of dialling numbers.
Mr Lith said: “Even more sophisticated phone systems can be easily circumvented. Modern-day distribution boxes can be bypassed with ultra-cheap tools, allowing neighbourhood phreaks [phone hackers] to phone to their heart’s content, or simply explore phone systems harmlessly, though illegally.”
Whilst VoIP could be vulnerable to certain types of fraud, there is more that can be done to overcome the vulnerabilities linked to this means of communication, argued Mr Lith, who detailed a fraud-monitoring and information-sharing group that had been launched for ISPs. The group, which was rolled out by the ISP Association, flags up any calls which look strange and issues an alert so it can be checked.
“For instance, any calls to out-of-the-ordinary destinations like Latvia, East Timor or the Cook Islands, might trigger an alert to a cloud-based telco hosting PBXes on behalf of its customers. The telco might react by blocking the call and then consulting the customer, who might in fact have legitimate reasons for calling exotic climes,” explains Lith.
Other security systems are also in place to help prevent VoIP security problems, such as notification of multiple failed password attempts or accounts limits set in place to limit any high call costs.
Mr Lith went on to say that other measures were also in the pipeline which would be capable of cracking down on increasingly sophisticated attacks. These include the “establishment of honeypot SIP servers that masquerade as production servers but are merely bait. Honeypot servers are relatively easy to crack and provide an opportunity to monitor state-of-the-art attacks, tools and origins of attacks without any threat to actual production servers,” Mr Lith added.
hSo provides managed networks designed for business. To get an instant cost for a leased line at your location, visit our online leased line price checker.
