How to Prevent hackers accessing your phone system.
In the UK the government has recognised the telecoms industry as one of the 13 CNI sectors (critical national infrastructure). This means that the telecoms industry is considered as pivotal to the functioning of the United Kingdom. Therefore showing how heavily businesses, government and other bodies rely on this industry for telephone and internet services which is key to the workings and efficiency of most organisations in the UK. This subsequently requires telecoms networks to carry out daily operations to ensure phone systems are secure and working effectively. Telecoms businesses also provide services that are integral to the health and social life of the UK population.
Ensuring that your businesses phone systems are able to prevent and deal with any potential hackers is of the highest importance for your company. If hackers do gain entry into your phone systems there is the potential outcome that your businesses private information could be accessed. This could also cause a long period of downtime for your business due to the effect that potential hackers could have. However at B4BC we want to make sure the chance of hackers is limited as much as possible and if there is unlikely event hackers gain entry into your phone systems B4BC offer all year round support to help you recover from this.
The best ways to prevent your SIP or VoIP phone systems from being hacked is to protect all of your businesses credentials with a strong password for your system.
- Strong passwords for admin, voip and voicemail accounts
- If possible – mandatory passwords for voicemail
- Audit above accounts regularly to ensure that they remain secure e.g. staff resignations/terminations or change of PBX maintainer and remove any admin and/or voicemail accounts not required
- Firewall preventing unauthorized access – run regular audits to ensure firewall rules still relevant and fit for purpose
- Ensure any “natted” ports for SIP Trunks are locked down to your SIP Providers IP Address
- Toll restrict voicemail ports
- Toll restrict extensions during evening and weekend periods
- Invest in fraud detection software
- Use a carrier that has effective toll fraud management to minimize loss should a breach occur.
According to recent surveys by Internet security firms claim that 40% of internet users have had an account hacked at some point. Many VoIP devices come with pre-set passwords for your device, at B4BC we recommend to you that changing these passwords immediately should be one of your priorities after purchasing a new phone system. This is due to the fact that passwords for phone systems can be available online for hackers to gain access to. Never share your passwords with anyone at any point. As well as this many phone systems do not have an automatic lockout system. Subsequently this allows hackers to be able barrage your interface with an infinite amount of keygen passwords.
If you need any more information regarding this get in touch with us at Best 4 Business Communications here at admin@b4bc.co.uk
