With purely remote and hybrid work proving that they're here to stay, the onus is now on businesses to improve and harden their communication systems. While many companies were already giving up on plain old telephone systems, there's now even more reason to switch to a cloud-based voice-over-IP (VoIP) system.
Of course, with any move comes growing pains, and security is a central concern for many organizations. Running an internal VoIP system can leave you vulnerable to many security threats, but hosted providers offer various features to keep your data safe. Keep reading to discover three ways that hosted VoIP providers can harden your business against communications security threats.
1. Data Encryption
Basic telephone exchanges transmit voice data as analog signals on dedicated circuits. Generally, these signals offer little protection against eavesdropping. However, the data itself is challenging to intercept yet most vulnerable to physical threats, such as wiretapping. Unsecured VoIP data may be susceptible to a more significant number of attack avenues.
Fortunately, securely hosted providers typically offer end-to-end encryption to help protect your data. In many ways, this makes your VoIP calls more secure than analog calls. By encrypting call data, attackers receive only useless information even if they manage to intercept a call. As a result, end-to-end encryption is among the most powerful methods available to protect your data from malicious parties.
2. Dedicated Security Expertise
VoIP security is a massive field of study, and building hardened VoIP systems requires experience and expertise. If your own internal IT department does not have this knowledge, properly hardening your company's systems can be difficult. Even worse, the consequences of missing potential vulnerabilities can be severe.
Hosted providers have entire teams dedicated to keeping their systems secure. This focus on security means that your provider protects your data from eavesdroppers through careful monitoring and proactive defense. The security team at your provider can monitor their server centers for unusual activity, helping to stop attackers before they can get their hands on your data in the first place.
3. Advice and Support
When working with a hosted solution, you can get advice and support from experts to help keep your VoIP data as secure as possible within your own company. Your provider can advise you on methods that ensure your employees don't expose themselves to potential security threats, reducing the likelihood of a data breach on your end.
While no system can ever be entirely immune to security vulnerabilities, hosted VoIP providers implement many features to keep your data as secure as possible. Using an off-site solution is the best way to keep your business communications safe despite rapidly evolving paradigms in how your employees work. Contact a company that works with hosted voice-over IP systems for more information.