Countermeasures for Common VoIP Security Threats

The affordability achieved with VoIP phone systems is making it exceptionally popular in today's business world. Business professionals make a humongous use of this communication resource to lower their efforts and costs. However, adopting this method also brings in all the common VoIP security threats, such as Phishing, ID Spoofing, Man-in-the-Middle attacks, Call Hijacking, Audio Spam, and other issues related to Internet telephony. Moreover, VoIP has its own personal threats coming from various new protocols and computer networks to deal with. Data handling over VoIP is a critical issue whatsoever.

As abstract as the concept is, there are various countermeasures to mitigate the security threats that exists in Voice over Internet Protocol. Here's discussing some of them:

Encryption - One effective method of preventing communication eavesdropping is by encrypting voice/video/text messages. Deploying ZRTP to encrypt whole packets is generally suggested. By creating SRTP or Secure Real-Time Transport Protocol, you can avail message authentication, call confidentiality, and text message encryption, and protection of audio/video streams.

Using SSH - Secure Shell network protocol is another better way to secure data communication, remote command execution, and all other secure network data transmission services occurring between two networked computers. In case of web-based interfaces, you can replace HTTPS with HTTP to better protect switches and gateways.

Constantly changing passwords - Changing all default passwords before plugging in the system to start a new session is one best way from exposing everything to someone. Furthermore, an updated intrusion detection system can help in preventing sensitive data revelation and other forms of attacks.