IP Telephones – Smart Answers for Small Business

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What is much required to handle a small business? Is it capital, business idea, employees, the employer or a modern business communication system? Though the first four are important, lack of proper communication can kill your business. Today, an IP telephone system turns out to be a very crucial component of a modern business, playing a critical role in the field of any business. Whether you need to contact an employee, reply back to your clients, or to support your customers very effectively, only a powerful telephone system can do the job correctly.

Look for IP Phone System Types

A smart business owner will look at ways of subscribing to an upgraded and modern communication system. As your business grows, your business phone system must be able to reach out nationally and internationally and grow with you.

Pure IP System

A pure IP system such as Toshiba’s IPedge gives you powerful features including messaging, voice mail, and computer data interface. IPedge works exclusively on IP digital data channels. In other words you can make a call from one IP address to another. Pure IP business phone systems save a lot off your communication expenses. You can make unlimited call to another IP address and impress your clients with advanced unified communication. When the client calls back and you are busy, you will get a message. Depending upon what settings you have, the system can convert the customer’s voice message to an email and send it to your email address. Using IP mobility, you can get the incoming call transferred to your mobile devices including smart phones, laptops, and tablets.

Hybrid IP System

A Hybrid IP system is ideally suited for a business that is a call center or has dedicated staff for answering calls. In a Hybrid IP system such as Toshiba’s Strata CIX, you can mix IP telephony with traditional PSTN line. At the end user level, you can use IP phones, digital phones or even old analog phones. When you make or receive a call on your traditional PSTN line, a convertor will transfer the call to your IP address. Similarly, if you get a call on you IP digital circuit and that is meant for a person who uses a traditional phone line, the call can be transferred.

Hybrid systems such as Strata CIX allows you to keep your existing phone line and, at the same time, move slowly and carefully to IP based business communication. It is kind of getting the best of both worlds.

Hosted IP System

In a hosted IP system, a vendor hosts a pure IP phone system in a cloud and offers you connections. At your end you need a good internet connection and a few IP capable phones. A hosted IP system, such as VIPedge from Toshiba, offers you all the benefits of an advanced pure IP-PBX without the hassles of capital and maintenance expenditures. Using either a laptop or IP phone, you can use all the advanced features. Since something like VIPedge is hosted on enterprise grade data centers, you can be assured of 100% connectivity all the time. In addition, hosted IP systems offer you Unified Communication and other advanced features.

Based on your requirements and capital adequacy, you can choose one of these modern business phone systems. The days of traditional PSTN lines are numbered, and the quicker you move away, the better it is.

About PhoneAM

PhoneAmerica Corporation is a leading supplier of advanced telecommunication systems for small and large business environments. A total service company, PhoneAmerica serves as a single point of contact for today’s growing communication needs, offering a wide range of telephone equipment, wiring, surveillance systems, telephone cost accounting systems, and voice processing systems.

Please call (800) 836-3601 for a free evaluation of your current system and the system you will need to carry your business into the FUTURE.

What is VoIP Phishing? How Does It Work?

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Phishing is the term used to define the attack carried out by malicious programs that breach the data privacy of individuals who end up giving up their personal data after mistakenly activating the programs. Phishing is becoming rampant for VoIP users and it has extended to such an extent that people have given it a new name: Vishing.

How Phishing Works?

Data thieves have invested an innovative way of stealing data from unsuspecting users of various digital services. Data theft is a popular way of harming an individual by getting illegal access to their personal data. There are a number of victims who gave away vital information to the data thieves without even realizing the consequences.

Phishing is a pretty simple yet powerful trick and it works something like this:

Users of VoIP and other digital service receives a voicemail or an e-mail informing that there is some kind of a problem with their PayPal, bank account, eBay etc. In order to resolve the issue, they require their personal data like credit card details, PayPal account information. Once the unsuspecting users give this information, data thieves can have a field day. There are many users who are easily tricked into providing them information pertaining to their credit cards, expiration date, security code etc. that can be easily used to create a clone of the credit cards. Users are easily robbed off their hard-earned money.

Examples of Phising Attacks

Here is a list of ways (not conclusive) that can be used to steal your personal information, in case you are the target of the phishing attack:

  1. You receive a mail from eBay, PayPal or similar companies that informs you of some irregularities on your part and requests you to provide account details to resolve the issue. They also inform you that your account has been frozen and the only way to restore it is to provide them with the necessary personal information.
  2. You receive a voice mail from your Internet banking company that your account password has been tampered with. They also inform that you will have to provide your personal information in order to stop the account from being misused.
  3. You receive a phone call from your bank and they inform you that some fraudulent or suspicious activities have been identified on your bank account. You will have to provide your internet banking details to ward off the threats and stop the malicious activities.

VoIP and Phishing

Prior to the advent of VoIP, the Phishers targeted unsuspecting users by sending them emails or calling them up on their PSTN phones. The same trick has been now toned to target the VoIP users wherein the users often receive calls from the Phishers who ask them to furnish their personal details at the pretext of saving them from some kind of a potential financial threat.

Now, VoIP is a vulnerable communication medium as most of the users are not aware of the security threats that it is prone to. PSTN lines were much securer than the VoIP and this is why a number of Phishers are trying to use the loopholes in the communication system to target the users.

Some steps that you can take to ward off the Phishing attacks are as follows:

  • Increase awareness of the threats that VoIP users are prone to. This is the easiest and the best way to protect your personal details.
  • It is imperative that you do a thorough checking about the caller before furnishing them with any vital personal information.
  • Use your call manager to track the calls that are repeated from unknown numbers so that you are aware about the caller prior to taking the calls.

About PhoneAM

PhoneAmerica Corporation is a leading supplier of advanced telecommunication systems for small and large business environments. A total service company, PhoneAmerica serves as a single point of contact for today’s growing communication needs, offering a wide range of telephone equipment, wiring, surveillance systems, telephone cost accounting systems, and voice processing systems.

Please call (800) 836-3601 for a free evaluation of your current system and the system you will need to carry your business into the FUTURE.