Communication is integral to so much of what we do in our daily lives. To no surprise, Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP for short, has revolutionized the way we speak to one another since its invention in 1995.
What’s more, the growth of VoIP shows no signs of slowing down any time soon. In fact, a report by Research and Markets found that the market cap of the VoIP industry is projected to grow to $102.5 billion by 2026. That will firmly cement VoIP as one of the primary means of global communication, for both commercial and personal use.
However, new technologies bring with them new opportunities, as well as new challenges for users to grapple with. Whether you’re a tech amateur or a VoIP expert, refreshing your knowledge is a plain necessity – especially at a time when poor cyber security threatens our digital safety.
So, what are you waiting for? Read on to learn more about how VoIP technology works, and security aspects you should know about – such as identifying VoIP callers trying to reach you.
What is VoIP Technology?
VoIP allows you to transmit voice calls over the Internet, as opposed to a regular phone line. When it was initially developed in 1995, the technology was largely inaccessible, in part due to the low bandwidth speeds which throttled users’ connections. This resulted in laggy voice calls, meaning it was not a viable means of communication, especially at the enterprise business level.
Luckily today this is no longer an issue. The rapid advancements in cloud computing have allowed for the hosting of high-speed, low-latency connections over the Internet Protocol. VoIP call services (like conference call apps) were now possible for anyone with an Internet connection to get signed up to. This made cheap, near-instant global communication accessible for small businesses and the wider public.
Why is the VoIP Market Growing So Fast?
To illustrate why VoIP technology is so significant, I will compare it to its predecessor tech: the telephony system.
Traditionally when making a phone call, several steps are required to reach your destination. First, you would dial the desired number, the call is routed through your local switching system, and it then travels across (mostly copper) telephone cables, until it reaches the receiver.
VoIP differs in that it uses a different underlying architecture to route the call. Instead of going through telephone lines, your voice data is ‘packetized’ and sent across the Internet. That means that you only need a power source and a broadband connection to make a call.
In short, when comparing VoIP vs landline telephones, VoIP is capable of doing everything that telephony does and more, for cheaper. Of course, there are many hurdles and challenges involved with actually accomplishing that, which I will explore in the following section.
Advantages & Disadvantages of VoIP technology
To briefly summarize the pros & cons of using VoIP:
Advantages:
- Highly portable, requiring only an Internet connection.
- Increased scalability and lower upfront cost vs traditional telephony.
- Fixed call rates regardless of location.
- Simple integration of new technologies e.g. group calling, call forwarding, voicemail-to-text conversion, or an automatic call distribution feature.
Disadvantages:
- It remains vulnerable to voice phishing attempts by cyber criminals.
- More likely that a call receiver will unknowingly mark an incoming call from a VoIP caller ID as spam.
- Call data may be at risk on a compromised local network.
How does a VoIP call work?
VoIP allows us to make voice calls over an Internet connection as opposed to a regular phone line. To send data over the Internet this way, the data must be first broken down into ‘packets’. These packets travel through the Internet in much the same way a YouTube video or an email does. When they reach their endpoint, the conversational data is unpacked into audio.
The security weakness here is that these data packets may be intercepted by a malevolent party. For instance, a cyber criminal that has targeted a business’s router with malware.
We must also consider how one makes and receives a VoIP call from the users’ perspective. Usually, your VoIP service provider will allow you to make calls to user profiles on the same platform, subject to custom security settings.
Note that cross-platform calls between VoIP services may not always be integrated. For example, you cannot easily call a Skype profile from a Zoom profile.
To make this process easier for users, some VoIP services offer their users a ‘VoIP phone number’. This does allow for cross-platform voice calls between separate VoIP services. These virtual numbers are also distributed by VoIP vendors, should you prefer creating a custom communications platform for your business.
Crucially, VoIP phone numbers allow you to make calls to a regular landline phone, by routing the call to a PBX switching system with VoIP phone service integration. The Caller ID will appear as “VoIP caller” on the recipient’s phone in this situation.
This process does not work vice versa, with traditional telephone hardware not being capable of routing a call to a VoIP phone number. As a result, users of traditional telephones may be skeptical of answering a call from an unknown caller ID.
We must consider all of these aspects when using VoIP calls for business, to minimize the risk of falling prey to hackers or scammers.
How Can You Trace a VoIP Caller?
When a telephone receives a call from a VoIP number, the caller ID will be displayed as “VoIP caller”. This level of anonymity is a perfect shield for scammers to fraudulently pose as the actual caller.
However, the risk can be mitigated by taking several precautions:
- Check the area code of the VoIP phone number. An unexpected long-distance call should be treated as more suspicious, and is worth double-checking in that case.
- Organize a time when you will take the call. Then when you are called right on time, it is very unlikely to be a fraudulent call.
- The caller should always inform the recipient what the expected caller ID will be.
Use a two-factor authentication method that records the caller’s IP address (you can protect this process with a free eSign software).
Top Safety Practices for Using VoIP
Being aware of common scam techniques
Awareness of VoIP scam techniques is essential for the proper protection of your data.
In the context of business management, you should ensure cyber security education is a high priority in your employee training and onboarding process. This will hopefully eliminate the main source of attack: social engineering or ‘phishing’ attempts.
Warning signs to look out for are:
- Repeated calls from a VoIP caller ID. It is improper etiquette to spam a client with calls – so this would suggest a fraudulent attack.
- Calls at an unexpected time.
- Calls from an unexpected area code.
- The caller being pushy or hasty, trying to rush you into divulging sensitive information.
Securing your local network
Educating your employees is one thing, but it is useless in the event of a serious breach.
Let’s say for example, that a rogue employee has shared details about an upcoming VoIP call to a malevolent third party. In this case, a User and Entity Behavior Analysis (UEBA) cyber security solution may detect and flag the incident to your security team.
In another incident, the source of attack might be from a malware on a business’s machine or local network. Running regular malware checks is advisable, especially on unencrypted networks.
If you go for the route of building your own communications platform, you should employ software penetration testing to root out any weaknesses. What is software testing? The area is broad, but it focuses on improving security outcomes for users. You might find employing third party software testers is useful to assist in this.
Using encrypted VoIP services
Encrypted VoIP services protect your data from being stolen, even if the network has been compromised.
Encryption works by randomly scrambling the call’s data packets, then reassembling the scrambled packets to intelligible speech at the user end. This is advisable for lines that handle sensitive information, such as your clients’ personal details.
Using local presence dialing
Is your business located in a different country than your client base?
You might find that your unfamiliar phone area code ends up becoming a cause for concern. That’s fine – you can always use a local presence dialer to change the area code. As a result, the risk of being mistaken for a cold caller will be much lower. This is especially useful when you need to make frequent calls to customers based in many different geographic regions.
Follow local regulations
Finally, always keep up to date with your government’s advice and regulations on VoIP calling. The relevant body in the United States is the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Conclusion
To conclude, VoIP calling is an attractive means of communication for both public and commercial use. Despite its strengths in being cheap and scalable, it remains susceptible to attack by cyber criminals.
For this reason, identifying incoming VoIP calls is a must. By now, you should have a good idea of what it takes to achieve this. Namely, arranging your business hours for calls and following necessary security protocols. Then, data from private calls will be kept safe from the prying eyes of cyber criminals and scammers.
April 7, 2023
Phone System 