Concerns over IP telephony security still present in SMB Market

Concerns about the security of Internet Protocol telephony solutions continue to persist among small and medium-sized businesses, research commissioned by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) reveals.
A survey of 350 SMBs (500 or fewer employees) found that just 50 percent of the businesses trust the security offered today by IP telephony product and solution vendors. That’s a slight improvement from a year ago, when 48 percent of SMBs surveyed said they trusted IP telephony security.

But IP telephony still lags behind traditional telephony systems (82 percent), Ethernet data networks (72) percent and wireless local area networks (60 percent) in the security confidence level SMBs have, according to the CompTIA survey.

“People are much more sensitized to disruptions in voice communications than they are with data communications,” said John Venator, president and chief executive officer, CompTIA. “If the delivery of an email is delayed by 30 seconds, neither the message sender nor the receiver is likely to notice. But a 30-second gap in the middle of a phone call is another story entirely.

“Even a brief interruption in voice service can have disastrous consequences for an organization, in lost business, downtime, customer dissatisfaction, or negative publicity,” Venator added. “That’s why it is incumbent on IP telephony vendors and solution providers to place security at the forefront of their offerings, and not leave it as an afterthought.”