Companies fearful of hacking attacks and white-collar crime have improved security on their data networks, but have probably left themselves vulnerable by paying too little attention to their telephone systems.

A standard private branch exchange (PBX), the in-house switching system that connects extensions to each other and to the outside telephone network, can be a huge backdoor problem for data network security. "Many corporations have implemented firewalls as well as antivirus and content filtering applications to reduce attack and fraud," says John van den Munckhof, MD of Dimension Data Interactive Communications.

"The PBX, however, remains a significant loophole. All the perimeter security in the world can be bypassed by a poorly configured modem."

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• News: Thwarting The PBX Hacker (6 September 2002)