VoIP technology is predicted to surpass even the large telecoms and may even close the gap on third world communications, improving the way that we communicate with the rest of the world.

VoIP is quickly becoming the way that a lot of businesses are preferring to do business and many believe that in time VoIP will become the standard way of telecommunications.

What has to be considered is the threat to security that VoIP could open you to.

Like other types of data networks, VoIP is susceptible to the usual attacks like viruses, spam, phishing, Dos attacks, lost and stolen data, toll fraud (when someone uses your network to make toll or long distance calls at your expense) and eavesdropping. The risks to your company security are many, but there are some things that you can do now to help protect yourself against attacks of this kind.

1. Keep your network away from the Internet
2. Make sure that you update patches regularly
3. Equip your system with firewalls
4. Restrict VoIP data to one VLAN (Virtual Local Area Network)
5. Keep track of your traffic and watch for any suspicious patterns
6. Lock down VoIP Servers
7. Multiple layers of encryption to deter
8. Build in redundancy into VoIP networks

Currently, the VoIP industry itself has not introduced measurements to protect businesses from VoIP fraud and attacks, but these points will help you to cover yourself and your communications.