Emerson Development LLC, a telephone technology development and licensing company based in NJ, has announced a new report that states grave, pervasive, and unavoidable cyber-security risks are associated with Internet-based VoIP telephone services.
n turn, the report calls for serious efforts to be taken by the insurance carriers as cyber-threats are evolving.
Titled “VoIP Security Review: Insurance,” the report claims that Internet-based phone services are cheap, unregulated and unprotected, resulting in potential major insurance losses. A number of VoIP providers have been offering discount VoIP telephone services in the United States and throughout the world, which has been making users worldwide shift from the reliable, secure traditional telephone network to an Internet environment of extreme risk.
Additionally, the report suggests that people with malicious intent are becoming increasingly attracted towards the VoIP services, lending them prone to hostile acts such as spying or espionage, hacking, intrusion, identity and intellectual property theft, and interruption of service. Apart from being exposed to all the cyber-risks of the Internet, VoIP also involves unique risks related to voice communications such as eavesdropping on and recording of phone calls, or redirecting calls to an imposter organization such as a hacker instead of a bank, adds the report.
The new research report issued by Emerson Development is being said to be especially significant for the Insurance Industry, as a number of insured user sectors such as government, the military, manufacturers, the legal profession, the banking industry, the transportation sector, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and medical practices and the not-for-profit sector have been relying upon VoIP online telephone service nowadays.
In a release dated April 23, Robert Mueller, a director at the FBI, had stated that the organization considers the cyber threat against the U.S. to be one of the greatest concerns of the 21st century.
In the words of Harry Emerson, CEO of Emerson Development and primary author of the report, because of the Internet’s open architecture, every person and every system has direct access to one another; therefore everybody has a trusted relationship with every hacker and terrorist in the world.
According to a yet another co-author of the report, Glenn Tippy, President and Managing Partner at Insurance Agency Gerrity, Baker, Williams Inc., insurance carriers will increasingly price for Internet or VoIP telephone exposure as cyber insurance products will be created for users of VoIP, as well as for VoIP providers and vendors, having profound effects upon the economy of the nation.
Earlier this month, Sipera (News – Alert) Systems, a provider of real-time Unified Communications enablement and security announced that it has closed a funding round of $10 million to collect a total sum of $48 million, which will be utilized for development of smartphone UC security solutions and VoIP security platforms.
Raja Singh Chaudhary
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