Security Protocol: Protect Your Phone Lines from International Long Distance Hacking

Hackers can exploit any weakness in your business – whether that weakness lay in your network firewall, physical security or your phone lines.

Long Distance Phone Hack Method

A client of ours was recently forced to shut down an operation that pulled in $55 million in revenues last year. The business segment fell prey to an international long distance fraud scheme. The fraudsters hacked into their phone systems and then sold the dial tone to others for pure profit. Our client did not realize they had a problem until the phone carrier notified them of the exorbitantly high expenditures on international calls.

Protecting Your Phone Lines

Phone carriers do not block international callers, so most companies are wide open to this scheme by default. You can guard against phone hacking by asking your phone company to block international callers. This tactic makes you immune to the dial-tone hacking scam described above, and it also prevents a number of other equally dangerous ploys coming from overseas.

Once any of your network components is breached, hackers can see and control all the systems permissible to the infected device. If they came in through the phone system, and the phone has access to a workstation, then they can move into the workstation. From there, they can access all the data on that device – account numbers, customer information, human resources, or whatever they believe might contain sensitive data. They can even upload a program that will sit quietly and wait until a worker inputs a bank account, social security number, or credit card.

Protecting every access point keeps your company safe, but cybercriminals are constantly looking for new vulnerabilities. That is why it is important for companies to partner with security firms that are actively engaged in cyberdefense.

Make sure your firewall is a business-class firewall and is configured by a certified firewall technician, and ensure it will adapt to new threats with an active security services and monitoring agreement.

We partner with Dell SonicWALL and offer their security packages through our standard enterprise management suite. Their products offer the most advanced security for a small business’ budget.