If your company is implementing voice over IP (VoIP) technology, it's making huge strides toward lower telecommunications costs. However, you may be concerned about security risks that crop up when your voice and data networks converge.

If hackers break into your VoIP network, they now can access more than just your sensitive company information and network data. They are also privy to all your employees' conversations.

But have no fear.

Protecting your company from VoIP security threats is really no different than protecting it from everyday network concerns. With the right mix of security policies, firewalls, intrusion detection/prevention software, and other solutions, we can help you guard against these security threats. And by helping you strengthen your network security, we can ensure your satisfaction with both your network and VoIP technology for years to come.

Let's take a look at the most common VoIP security threats — and the appropriate measures we can take to stop them in their tracks.

Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks

By far, the largest security concern for VoIP owners is Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks. These attacks aim to bring networks to their knees by flooding them with useless traffic and exploiting known limitations in the TCP/IP protocols. This onslaught of traffic clogs the network, eats up bandwidth, and prevents the network from addressing legitimate traffic — thereby jeopardizing employees' ability to work.

To combat DoS attacks, we can help you implement an intrusion detection solution that instructs your network devices to ignore all illegitimate traffic and data packets. These hardware and software solutions can detect the unique signatures of DoS attacks after the transmission of just a few data packets — and can respond by automatically blocking their transmission for good.

Hack Attacks for Profit or Espionage

In other cases, hackers may be tempted to plug into your VoIP network to make free long-distance calls. Since your company pays a flat monthly fee for its VoIP lines, these calls won't radically increase your phone charges (unless culprits are calling 900 numbers), but they could consume valuable network bandwidth and slow your network performance down to a crawl.

More importantly, the hacker who gains access to your network has the opportunity to steal other valuable assets, including company data and sensitive data never intended for outsiders.

The trick to protecting against this lies in having strict access-control lists and making sure the VoIP gateway is configured in such a way that only the people on this list are permitted to make and receive VoIP calls.

Network Hijacking

Another security threat to your company is network hijacking — or “man-in-the-middle” — schemes.

Because voice travels in packets over the data network, hackers who have broken into your network can use hacking tools to identify, store and play back voice traffic traveling the network between sender and receiver. Essentially, the hackers intercept active VoIP transmissions and eavesdrop on employee conversations. This can be particularly damaging, for example, if they break into calls between company executives discussing competitive strategies, pending mergers and acquisitions, or financial information.

We can help you combat network-hijacking threats by installing state-of-the-art firewalls. These solutions help by randomizing conversation sequence numbers, thus confusing the hacker's device and alerting your network to a problem. We may also recommend advanced network switches, which provide an additional security layer by verifying users' individual MAC addresses before allowing the transmission.

As VoIP solutions become more widespread, you'll likely see a rise in security threats aimed at this technology. But don't worry. We'll work with you to ensure that your network security covers all the bases (see sidebar) -- and that it remains airtight.

Through our VentureTech Network membership, we can help you address all of your network security concerns — and keep hackers on your company's “Do Not Call” list. Contact us today.

Network Security 101

Confused by network security components? Here's an overview of the areas we can address in your company.

Network Security Policy -- A written policy is a must-have for every company. It defines the best security practices for your company and provides guidelines for keeping network security strong (e.g., monthly password changes, requiring advanced, alphanumeric passwords, off-site storage of critical data).

Perimeter Security -- Your security solution should include a number of building blocks, including firewalls, which examine all incoming and outgoing data, and virtual private networks (VPNs), which authenticate users, encrypt/decrypt information exchanges and determine individuals' access privileges to company resources.

Network Monitoring -- Intrusion detection and prevention solutions detect and correct security breaches — often helping to identify and stop intruders, and alert security personnel that a network invasion may be in progress.

Ongoing Management -- As the security landscape changes over time, we can help your company stand guard against threats by conducting regular security assessments, and installing the latest antivirus solutions and security patches.