Highlights:
- Phishing and social engineering pose significant threats, with humans often being the most vulnerable aspect of security.
- With rising security threats and vulnerabilities in cloud and AI technologies, many companies are adding an abstraction layer at the network edge.
Voice security threats are growing rapidly, making enterprise’s communication systems more vulnerable than ever. Conventional concerns like toll fraud and TDoS attacks have been joined by sophisticated threats like caller ID spoofing and vishing, especially targeting contact centers.
To protect your business, a comprehensive approach is a must. You should not only defend against traditional voice vulnerabilities but also add communication security into your complete enterprise security strategy.
Also, according to an IDC survey, nine out of ten organizations have faced significant financial setbacks and productivity losses because of voice security incidents within the last three years. It shows the urgent need for the security of voice communications.
The most common types of voice-related attacks include:
Attain Enterprise Communication Security with a Voice-security Strategy
Typically, organizations have relied on collaboration platforms, PSTN providers, and contact center vendors for voice security in addition to their own tools. Despite advancements, this is not enough.
The transformation to the cloud is a bigger change, with many enterprises exchanging PSTN with VoIP, frequently hosted in the cloud. Older monolithic, closed systems provided good security but were not enough. Advanced open IP-based systems, while more effective, pose new security concerns. So, it is necessary to have a comprehensive voice-security strategy in place.
A multi-layered voice-security strategy
In response to escalating security threats, evolving regulations, and vulnerabilities associated with cloud and AI technologies, many companies are increasingly implementing an abstraction layer at the network edge to enhance their defenses.
This layer includes all backend communication capabilities and services, empowering businesses to control and track access and remarkably improve security effectively.
This abstraction layer handles the following elements:
- Caller validation
- Detect unwanted calls
- Tackle various telephony-based threats
Adding AI into the abstraction layer is essential, as it offers necessary insights for both pinpointing threats and verifying user behavior. It helps with:
- Threat signature detection
- Anomaly detection
- Correlating security events
An efficient abstraction layer must give real-time, 360-degree visibility to all voice traffic at the network edge. It should also display metrics like risks, threatening calls, and related policies through a customizable dashboard.
Additionally, it should examine all incoming and outgoing call traffic and analyze the source, destination, SIP header information, and payload types. Calls should be authenticated with behavioral analytics to show unusual activity.
Finally, the foremost thing is the system must allow users to configure policy-based rules, automatically enforce them, and block or redirect calls based on risk tolerance using an embedded session border controller (SBC).
What is the Trajectory of Voice-based Cyberattacks?
Conventional technology has tackled common hacking methods like phishing, Telephony Denial of Service (TDoS), and man-in-the-middle attacks.
However, hackers are turning out more and more sophisticated, growingly relying on social engineering. By manipulating a small amount of personal information, social engineers exploit human emotions to access private data.
Many fraud activities begin with social engineering, frequently involving deceptive phone calls, and hackers may utilize AI or the Dark Web to extend their initial knowledge.
In current digital landscape, personal information is readily accessible, making it easier for threat actors to gather sensitive details such as an individual’s workplace, job title, or even the name of their pet. These malicious actors exploit this data to impersonate victims, often gaining the trust of a company’s tech support team.
By posing as the victim, they can respond convincingly to routine inquiries regarding account numbers, passwords, and login IDs, thereby compromising security and potentially leading to significant breaches.
Once inside a personal account, they can have other corporate data. While solutions like voice biometrics help fight such breaches, hackers are now utilizing AI to trick even voice patterns.
What Steps Can We Take to Mitigate Voice Hacking Risks?
Creating voice security best practices is essential. The process includes four major steps:
Secure Voice Communications System: 5 Ways to Protect Your Organization
The solutions we will be discussing now are cloud-based and available on a per-user subscription; these have evolved with AI-powered data analytics for enhanced protection, detection, and response.
- Educated human firewall
Phishing and social engineering attacks are the major threats, with humans frequently being the weakest link in security.
To tackle such situations, ensure employees know the corporate security policies and have regular training and testing on detecting cyber threats. Cost-effective SaaS solutions offer up-to-date training and assessments. Training should align with corporate policies, and test results should reinforce the significance of this training.
Due to a lack of skilled cybersecurity professionals, organizations will increasingly need AI-powered tools to boost the success of their current resources.
- Unified device management
With businesses going to the cloud, endpoints like workstations, laptops, smartphones, and IoT devices have become bigger attack surfaces. These devices need to be monitored and kept secure and updated.
Moreover, device management should be part of staff onboarding and offboarding to ensure all devices accessing corporate data are properly streamlined.
Modern cloud-based device management platforms, offered via per-user or per-device subscriptions, automate onboarding and simplify management through policies.
They use AI to enforce compliance and optimize device security, assisting cybersecurity teams to stay updated on device management.
- Advanced identity and authentication management
Controlling user identities, access, and authentication is becoming utterly difficult. Maintaining usernames and passwords is no longer enough, making MFA (multi-factor authentication) the least requirement.
Authentication platforms should combine easily with applications to lessen password use through SSO (single sign-on), providing strong access and authentication mechanisms to protect corporate data.
Advanced identity management should use AI to verify factors like device compliance, user session risk, and network access location, enforcing a zero-trust policy.
These cloud platforms are accessible on a per-user subscription basis, with modern features for boosted cybersecurity. Password-less authentication is turning out to be a promising solution.
- Perimeter-less network
The transformation to a remote and geographically fragmented workforce challenges businesses and cybersecurity teams.
Security must include users, devices, communications, applications, and data, irrespective of location. Conventional perimeter security, like firewalls, needs to evolve into a perimeter-less model.
This can be attained through SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) or SSE (Secure Service Edge) technologies, which provide real-time security detection and protection.
These advanced security architectures are accessible on a subscription basis with configurable features for improved cybersecurity.
- Advanced endpoint protection
The greatest advancement in cybersecurity over the past ten years is Extended Detection and Response (XDR) endpoint security. These unified solutions use endpoint applications and cloud-based tools to collect and analyze data from multiple sources, utilizing AI to highlight, stop, and recover cyberattacks.
They help track powerful intrusions and reduce vulnerabilities, saving time by automating repetitive tasks like threat hunting and enabling near real-time responses.
In a borderless business ecosystem, sectors like financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, and government are the main targets. Ensure your cybersecurity teams are regularly utilizing advanced tools to safeguard against these threats.
Summary
Cyberattacks focusing on organizational communications have become prevalent. With threats ranging from inadvertent employee errors to sophisticated cybercriminal campaigns, an advanced cybersecurity strategy is vital.
Moreover, to secure voice communications, it’s necessary to gauge your current systems and employ expert-led security measures as soon as possible. By doing so, you can protect your information and operate with confidence in today’s digital landscape.
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