Businesses neglect Wi-fi and VoIP security

According to a new report from the National Computing Centre (NCC), business security strategies tend to focus on virus protection, spam blocking and firewalls, but fail to provide adequate security for wi-fi and VoIP networks.

This leaves them vulnerable to a growing number of security threats such as distributed denial of service (DoS) attacks and spam over internet telephony (spit).

VoIP systems are also vulnerable to fraud, particularly premium-rate fraud where a hacker infiltrates the VoIP system and makes calls to a premium rate number. IP systems are more vulnerable to this type of attack than PBXs (private branch exchanges).

The NCC’s research, which looked at IT strategy in 190 end user organisations, found that 40 per cent of respondents had either failed to secure their wireless network at all or had only partially secured it, while only 15 per cent had implemented VoIP security measures.

According to Mr Stefan Foster, managing director of the NCC, running unsecured wi-fi is like locking the front door in a house but leaving the windows open.