Traditional landline telephony has been the mainstay of both household and business communication in the last century. With the introduction of fast broadband Internet connections available at low-cost, a new technology has emerged in the voice communication space. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) can offer significant cost savings over traditional landline services for local or long distance calls, and for calls to both international locations and mobile devices. In view of this, market research companies and analysts project that VoIP uptake is rapidly increasing and the future of voice communication is closely tied to IP technologies.

Why was VoIP developed?

VoIP was developed primarily as a technology to compete with traditional telephony, and as such, the priorities during its development were focused on quality of voice calls and the reliability of the service.  The ability to utilise VoIP telephony with existing telephone switchboard technology and computer systems have also become pivotal considerations in VoIP development and adoption.  This focus has allowed VoIP to rapidly become a feasible alternative to traditional telephony, however has also introduced a number of security considerations to be addressed prior to achieving the same degree of ‘trust’ that is now placed in the traditional landline telephone system.

As such, the out of the box security of certain VoIP and Internet Telephony solutions is considered inadequate for some uses, unless properly considered and accounted for. An insecure VoIP system may expose organisations and individual users to the potential for eavesdropping on conversations, theft of services, interruption of service and other impacts.