VoIp brings dangers as well as benefits
All eyes will be on Berlin over the coming days as the world's telecommunications professionals convene to showcase their technologies and, most significantly, try and assess what the future holds for the field.
Predictably, much of the talk will focus on how new systems can pass on savings to businesses of all sizes through reducing operating costs.
However, while the future may look rosy, just as the leading firms continue to advance their systems, so too do criminals aim to keep one step ahead of developments.
According to many communications observers, voice over IP phishing or Vishing is likely to be the greatest challenge facing the information security departments of providers over the coming years.
Indeed, the problem is already very much a reality, with several high profile cases of fraud having taken place across the Atlantic over recent months.
With many businesses and private individuals now likely to be aware of the dangers of responding to unsolicited email and have been encouraged to make a telephone call to verify a company offering a service, fraudsters have taken the initiative and switched their attention to obtaining information through the phone.
Given that most genuine corporations nowadays have automated voice systems greeting their customers and the fact that VoIP lines can be set up with any requested number rather than being restricted to a local area code, it is easy to see why this method of communication is open to criminal abuse.
Notably, customers of the Santa Barbara Bank in California found themselves victims of a vishing scam earlier this year, having received and email inviting them to call a local number though, rather than getting through to the bank's main switchboard, they were connected to one end of a VoIP system.
Fortunately, the scam was easily detected due to its amateur nature, though the fact that vishers can create a fully-functional PBX for as little as £10, for example through the use of Asterisk, it is feared that simply by setting up a number of scams, the fraudsters will at some point strike it lucky.
Aside from a growing awareness of the risk, such as with email scamming, there is at present no real solution to protecting consumers from vishers.
For businesses, however, the problem needn't be so serious.
Indeed, the very same technology which can put them at risk also offers the solution.
Just as it is harder to recognise the number of an incoming VoIP call, so too is it harder for a scammer to determine their intended victim's number meaning that those businesses which fall behind the advances being made in communications not only face higher call costs but are also putting themselves at greater risk of falling victim to the new generation of cyber criminals 
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