Experts: Enterprises Must Focus on VOIP Security

As the number of VOIP deployments is expected to continue to increase, IT professionals and researchers are urging enterprises not to forget about security.

Voice-over-IP security threats are viewed as more theoretical than actual. But the few cases that have come to light have been brazen and costly. For example, investigators arrested two people in 2006 for a scam in which they were accused of hacking into the networks of several unnamed companies and hijacking their VOIP bandwidth for resale.

With IP phone use growing, some security specialists are saying it is a mistake to downplay the danger and it’s time to learn what the threats are as well as how to counter them.

In a report, analysts from In-Stat predicted that the number of business IP phones sold would grow from 9.9 million in 2006 to 45.8 million in 2010. Yet more than 40 percent of the enterprises it surveyed don’t have any specific security plans for their VOIP deployments. When asked to rate their VOIP security knowledge, most of the 250 IT professionals surveyed ranked themselves “somewhat knowledgeable”—the lowest rating the survey offered.

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