In the digital world, eavesdropping is a form of cyberattack in which hackers intercept and record Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone calls, usually to steal personal or business information. Since the attack does not affect call quality, it’s hard to tell if you are being spied on.

Eavesdropping has recently been making headlines, but this form of cyberattack has been around for years. Cybercriminals have been listening in on VoIP phone calls since the tech was introduced to the market, and they show no sign of stopping their malicious activities anytime soon.

As IT security consultants, we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. Managed IT services providers (MSPs) such as ours want to provide clients with enterprise-level IT, but that requires that we specialize in overwhelmingly intricate technology.

As of late, eavesdropping has been making the headlines due to the surge in frequency. Making it an ideal time to review how well your Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) phone systems are protected. However, this isn’t entirely new to VoIP, Vomit and Peskyspy are just some of the prolific VoIP eavesdropping attacks that have gained infamy since 2007. Spare your business from VoIP eavesdropping with these tips:

Never deploy with default configurations
Everyone wants to get things rolling as quickly as possible, but this often results in VoIP phones being deployed with their default configurations.

Shopping around for a managed IT services provider is tough. You’re looking for a business to manage extremely complex and delicate technology, so they can’t be expected to get into the nitty gritty details of DNS-layer security, intrusion prevention systems, and encryption in their marketing content.