The tapping of VoIP calls is being investigated by the European Union’s Judicial Co-Operation Unit, according to an article on ZDNet.

The unit, also known as Eurojust – a pan-European group led by Italy – announced the feasibility study on Friday. Citing concerns that organised criminals are using VoIP based services such as Skype to avoid phone tapping techniques that are easier to implement by law enforcement agents on traditional, phone networks.

Eurojust’s acting national member for Italy, Carmen Manfredda, said “The possibility of intercepting internet telephony will be an essential tool in the fight against international organised crime within Europe and beyond”

Manfredda pointed out that Co-operation between member states to ensure the continual use of VoIP Services was essential, “Our aim is not to stop users from taking advantage of internet telephony, but to prevent criminals from using Skype and other systems to plan and organise their unlawful actions. Eurojust will make all possible efforts to coordinate and assist in the cooperation between Member States.”

With their sights set on Mafia related crimes, Manfredda and Eurojust’s Italian desk are co-ordinating the VoIP-tapping investigations and aim to “overcome the technical and judicial obstacles to the interception of internet telephony systems, taking into account the various data protection rules and civil rights.”

Despite giving an extensive explanation of its law enforcement programme and capabilities to Eurojust, Skype rejected reports that it had refused cooperate with the authorities, stating that it works with law enforcement agencies where legally and technically possible. A spokesperson for Skype said “Skype remains interested in working with Eurojust despite the fact that they chose not to contact us before issuing this inaccurate report”.

An article on the Search Engine Journal recently picked up on a benefit that might be missed by a lot of companies that have an online presence.

Despite the fact that digital advertising has overtaken traditional media, it neverthless would be naieve of a company to ignore the fact that a large amount of business is still done over the phone.

Anyone who uses pay per click (PPC) advertising needs to pay particular attention to this last point as while traffic and sales can be tracked while it stays on the internet, if a customer decided to phone your business, with a traditional phone system, there is no easy option for tracking that traffic.

If the your website displays a contact phone number prominently and you don’t track your phone calls, that could amount to a substantial hole in your measurement of return-on-investment.

With VoIP technology, you can set up a telephone number specific to your advertising campaigns, and track the calls that come in through that number.

The feedback you can obtain from using VoIP to track calls includes intregration with web reports, track whether calls that are answered and missed (thus allowing you to recapture missed calls and recover lost leads), digitally record calls for analysis, obtain caller demographics, obtain names and addresses for callers that can then be directly added to your mailing lists.

If you currently run an online business with offline sales streams, it would be well worth considering switching to a VoIP telephone system for just these benefits alone.

According to an article on FierceVoip, SIP trunking is on the rise and not only does it potentially offer massive savings for for businesses, but it seems that security firms could benefit as well. A lot of companies are moving towards an all-IP telecommunications system in order to saving money, but there are security risks that may not be apparent in the rush to change over the office telecommunications system.

DOS (Denial Of Service) attacks, rouge VoIP gateways and illegitimate handset usage on VoIP networks are all threats that exist for those using VoIP systems. Fortunately, a number of network vendors exist to provide solutions to these problems.

The answer comes in the form of implementing multiple hardware and software approaches such asstandards-based security access. In addition, firewalls that can also be deployed that work in a similar fashion to those on a standard office pc, and then software and equipment is avilable to monitorusage spikes across applications on the IP system.

Companies such as Convergence, Cisco and Acme Packet, already provide the above solutions and as more businesses integrate VoIP and SIP systems into their communications infrastructure, these companies stand to gain as demand for their security products grows.