High cost of hackers getting into the PBX

Many VoIP customers are surpassed when they receive outrageous phone bills. This is often due to PBX hacking where a fraudster hijacks a telephone system to place premium calls.

Unsuspecting VoIP customers are often surprised when they receive outrageous phone bills, especially when their telephone service providers do not explain the risks of toll fraud, better known as PBX hacking. International fraudsters are constantly hijacking telephone systems and using them to place calls to premium charge-by-the-minute numbers.

SIP trunking is a VoIP service that allows service providers to deliver telephone services to customers equipped with SIP-based IP-PBX. Without the correct preventative measures, SIP trunking often results in huge unforeseen costs that can cripple a small to medium size organisation when their IP-PBX or SIP trunk is hacked.

Euphoria Telecom CEO George Golding says a free SIP trunk doesn’’t necessarily mean cost savings. “Most local VoIP service providers don’t have sophisticated fraud prevention systems in place to prevent hackers from running up charges if a PABX is hacked and they also don’t take liability for the fraudulent charges.”

Businesses often use local service providers that normally lack such antifraud systems, leaving customers to foot the bill. The law is also not much help, because no regulations require carriers or service providers to reimburse customers for fraudulent activity.

“If your VoIP provider doesn’t offer control mechanisms to dramatically reduce or prevent fraudulent use of your SIP account, you may want to look into using a different provider,” says Golding.

Euphoria has introduced a level of security on their SIP trunk and Cloud PBX services to dramatically reduce the risks associated with toll fraud. Its VoIP-based Cloud PBX phone system and SIP trunks restricts international calls on a granular level.

It can restrict specific extensions on its Cloud PBX and also restrict calls to specific countries on a per-extension and per-SIP account basis. Specific extensions can be programmed to allow or prohibit international calls to specific countries.

This way one can allow specific international countries to be called on those extensions by users that require it, but still block all high risk toll fraud countries – even in the event where an account is compromised.