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Are the security concerns surrounding VoIP justified?
For some time now, it has become clear that businesses of all sizes are beginning to see voice over IP (VoIP) telephony systems as the ideal way to move their corporate communications forwards, allowing them to cut back on costs while simultaneously implementing greater flexibility among employees.
Indeed, last month US-based IBISWorld predicted that 2008 is poised to be the 'breakout year' for VoIP, with the technology breaking into both the private and corporate mainsteam and even becoming the 'predominant telephony technology' across the Western world.
"The VoIP providers industry will easily outperform the wider telecommunications sector this year, given that it is an emerging service which continues to gain greater consumer and business acceptance," the Los Angeles company concluded.
As encouraging as this may be, a couple of worrying new reports have served to confirm what many people have long feared- that the uptake of security applications is failing to keep up with the roll-out speeds of VoIP itself, thereby leaving many firms at risk from outside attacks.
Just recently, research carried out by In-Stat found that over 40 per cent of the British enterprises polled have no specific plans in place for securing their VoIP systems.
"No mechanisms for securing VoIP had more than 50per cent penetration across all sizes of business," explained Victoria Fodale, an analyst at In-Stat.
"Proactive measures, including periodic security audits and pre-deployment assessments had low percentages of penetration too, even among the larger organizations."
Now another report has flagged up 100 potential flaws of corporate VoIP systems, ranging from loopholes which could be used to gain unauthorised access to drawbacks which may lead to blackouts or denial of service.
In addition, a number of the telecoms packages analysed were found to be potentially vulnerable to information harvesting or code execution attacks.
According to Rick Dalmazzi, chief executive of Canadian VoIPshield Systems, the company behind the new report, "Nobody takes VoIP security seriously enough."
Coming under criticism are a number of the biggest names in the online communications sector, who have been accused of failing to get ahead and implement tough security measures now, before the internet criminals become sophisticated enough to cause any real damage.
However, it is not all doom and gloom.
The companies in question have all resolved to look into the concerns raised while also accusing the report's authors of self-promotion and grandstanding.
Furthermore, the very fact that all these reports are coming out prior to VoIP making its long-awaited breakthrough shows that the sector in general is indeed being proactive when it comes to questions of security, though, of course, only time will tell if enough have been done.
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