Cybercriminals are Behind the Latest Phone Service Disruptions
September was a rough month for phone service providers. Just like we’ve seen with other vital industries like fuel and meat suppliers, SIP Trunk providers are under attack. Four major voice over IP (VoIP) service providers reported that their systems were the targets of cybercriminals who launched distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) last month alone. These callous attacks are having an adverse effect on businesses nationwide that have endured outages.
As more and more organizations have adopted VoIP technology, SIP Trunk providers have become magnets for criminal attacks. There has been an unprecedented number of attacks in the past four to six weeks, and we anticipate even more while these providers hustle to get their houses in order.
One vendor suffered a catastrophic week-long DDoS attack that took down almost all of their services and portals, leaving their customers without voice services. This particular attack was an extortion DDoS where the hackers demanded $4.5 million to halt their malicious assault.
SIP providers are feeling the pressure from their customers. Cybersecurity is no joke when it comes to phone service. For most businesses, including ours and our clients, VoIP service is crucial. Unfortunately, we live in an interconnected world which means we can’t deliver phone services without depending on these backbone providers.
What can business owners do? Two things…use a third-party answering service that you can route incoming calls to in the event of an outage. The second thing is set up a failover service for outbound calls. The secondary service would automatically kick in when the primary service fails. This is similar to how a second internet connection can keep your business online in the event of an internet outage.
Contact us for information about failover systems for your business.