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Voice-over-IP (VoIP) has spread like wild fire across all continents, and businesses around the world are tapping its benefits. Unfortunately, VoIP fraud is also on the rise worldwide. Since the risk is high now, it is important that businesses protect their PBX (News - Alert) systems and/or VoIP accounts. Media reports show that the situation is so bad that if your organization is not secured, chances of closing down are very high.

Globally, experts say that VoIP fraud has cost businesses and individuals hundreds of thousands of US dollars. In Australia alone, VoIP fraud is up 35 percent since 2010. Likewise,

South Africa has been deemed an easy target, especially from Eastern Europe. South Africa’s communications service provider (CSP (News - Alert)) Abacus Telecomm reports that the carrier sees 15 to 45 attack attempts per day on its IP PABX systems. But, they are secured and have integrated firewalls in place.

In a recent blog post, XO Communications (News - Alert) data engineer Himanshu Kapadia gives a few examples of VoIP vulnerabilities and shows they are being exploited. A few of the key vulnerabilities identified by Kapadia include call fraud, phishing over VoIP and eavesdropping. While fraud has become a major issue for VoIP users and providers, phishers are using social networks to gain consumers identities or account information, says the blogger. Likewise, by eavesdropping on VoIP calls, hackers are stealing phone numbers and account pin numbers.

“To make VoIP secure we need to make sure that signaling and media is secure and fail proof against any security attacks,” wrote Kapadia. Since VoIP calls use IP for transport, it is important to  secure an IP link to VoIP. For SIP services, Kapadia recommends avoiding the public Internet and using SIP services over IP-VPN. For example, MPLS based IP-VPN segregates customers’ VoIP traffic from other customers’ traffic and the public Internet.

Another level of security is protocol-based security. Kapadia recommends encrypting media by adopting the secure real-time transport protocol (SRTP), which offers the highest levels of security one can currently get for VoIP.