Top 5 Tips for Avoiding Phone System Hacking

Top 5 Tips for Avoiding Phone System Hacking

1) Restrict international calling. Call your carrier and have them turn it off completely. Most international business people are comfortable with Skype, Google Hangouts, and the like anyway.

2) Require account codes. If you must make international calls, require an account code to connect the call. Call your carrier and request this simple change – calls will not connect until the code has been entered following dialing.

3) Enable alerts. Most carriers will send you a text or email if your usage exceeds a certain threshold, so you know to get involved.

4) Firewall should be on a need to connect basis. Only allow known IP addresses to connect to your phone system. If you have teleworkers connecting from home, enable hot desking to require a PIN to enable the phone or phone app.

5) ‘1234’ is a terrible PIN. Stop doing that. Don’t use default PINs, don’t use 1111, 0000, 1234. Ask your system administrator or Extenda to move to 5 digits or more. Hackers can access your phone system by hacking into your voicemail or conference bridge, so please, use sophisticated passwords. Our systems will lock them out after a number of bad guesses.