Your insurance company has enough to deal with on a day to day business. The security of your business phone system is the last thing on your mind but it should be a monthly priority for you to review.
Phone hijacking is estimated to have cost its victims over $4.73 billion globally last year which is up $1 billion from the year before, according to the Communications Fraud Control Association.
How is it done? A hacker breaks into your system and makes calls to expensive International destinations or premium dial numbers like psychic hotlines. The hacker has a deal with the owners of the numbers to share in the money. Phone providers are hit with the bill and then pass it on to their customer.
Major carriers like AT&T and Verizon have very sophisticated systems in place to catch hackers before they run up big bills and they can generally afford to eat the charges. Many customers now are using smaller local VoIP companies to save money who don’t have such anti-fraud systems in place and have no choice but to pass the bill on to their customers.
So what do we do? First let me say this, unfortunately if someone wants in to your system bad enough they will get in and ultimately we nor anyone else can guarantee anything. But past that here are a few key things we have in place for you.
1. All calling to premium numbers is disabled by default
2. All calling to International numbers is OFF until a customer turns it on.
3. Our phone passwords are between 16 and 32 characters making them time consuming to crack
4. We monitor usage patterns on accounts and if there is out of the ordinary usage i.e. hundreds of minutes to a country where none have ever been seen before, we notify the end user to see if this is legitimate traffic and if not immediately shut it down.
So what can you do?
1. Use a carrier with a sophisticated system of preventing these hacks like Blue Ocean
If you don’t know what your carrier has in place, call them and ask them. Find out how they protect you and find out exactly what you are liable for in case it happens.
2. User very strong passwords for your systems online portals and softphones
Passwords are a pain but essential to your online protection from having your phone system hacked. Trust me the pain of having a complex password is better than the pain of getting a $166,000 bill from your phone provider.
3. Change your password frequently particularly after connecting to any public WiFi spots.
We really can’t stress the importance of YOU having strong passwords and changing them frequently as the KEY in all of this. If someone gets your email address and password, there is basically NOTHING we can do to prevent your exposure because to us it IS YOU!
Everything you do across a public WiFi should be assumed by you to be trapped and monitored by someone near you. It really is as easy as they make it seem on TV. Change your password for everything you have accessed while on WiFI.
Again, no one is perfect and can prevent all hacking attempts but our systems in combination with our customer’s diligence will make it very difficult to have your Bluewave account compromised. Feel free to contact us at 205 776 6910 at any time for more information on VoIP hacking and fraud.