Telephone Denial of Service (TDoS) attacks are on the rise, and no business is exempt from this security risk. While phone spam is not a new threat to businesses, risks to your communication systems have evolved.

Today's hackers are using sophisticated malware to infect smartphones and flood the phone systems of agencies or companies with spoofed phone calls, resulting in phone line unavailability for legitimate callers.

The growth of TDoS is so concerning, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have issued warnings to businesses about this risk. If a telephone-based DOS attack targets your organization, you may suffer consequences that are even worse than phone system downtime. TDoS attacks can be used as a "smokescreen," or distraction from other information security threats against your network. Increasingly, TDoS targets also face extortion demands to pay a ransom to stop the attack.

While the Internet Crime Complaint Center has received thousands of reports about TDoS attacks, there have only been a few convictions to date. TDoS attacks equally impact every kind of phone system, regardless of whether a business is using traditional phone technology, premises-based systems, or voice-over-IP (VoIP) telephony. To protect your brand, it’s time to determine your risk level, evaluate solutions, and create a plan for response.

If you feel your business received a high number of strange calls in the past year from telemarketers, robots or scammers, you’re probably correct. Last year, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) received over 7 million complaints from businesses and consumers about suspicious phone calls and scammers. That represents a 34% annual growth in the volume of unwanted and criminal phone communications.

Cybercriminals and scammers are still relying on phone lines as a method for trying to extract money from their targets, and some of last year's most common phone scams included more IRS tax scams and fake tech support schemes. Phone risks aren’t going anywhere, and businesses are facing a new malware threat which could tie up their phone lines and smokescreen other criminal activity.

As a small business, your phone lines are a critical tool for communicating with employees and customers. If your lines are down, it can cause reputation damage to your business, even if you're the target of a threat.

An unreliable business phone system can be a very costly expense. Your employees and customers rely on voice calling technology to communicate and collaborate. If your phones go down, it will have an immediate impact on productivity, customer satisfaction, and brand reputation.

Research shows that making the switch to hosted telephony can deliver significant cost savings compared to premises-based PBX phone systems. However, the cost isn't the only factor to consider when evaluating if cloud Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solutions are right for your needs.

Understanding the full scope of benefits made possible with modern phone systems can help you future-proof business communications.

Cloud phone systems no longer represent a high-risk investment for businesses. By the end of 2019, 90% of companies will be using cloud apps and services, and analysts predict nearly 100% of firms will adopt cloud tools by 2021. In this blog, you’ll learn seven remarkable ways that hosted telephony could transform the way your organization communicates.

Using IP to carry voice traffic (VoIP) opens up a world of possibilities and new opportunities. Call recording is one of them. But, it's so much more than being able to make an MP3 mix of voicemails from persistent sales people. Buying a business call recording system can offer many other benefits to your business. Organizations of all sizes can use audio recordings to strengthen employee training, marketing, and customer service. Call recordings can improve record-keeping, boost regulatory compliance, and provide clarity during disputes.

With the wrong call recording solution, you may not unlock any of these benefits. Your business could face a lot of risks. You could face legal trouble if you fail to follow federal and state laws for wiretapping or recording. You could face costly regulatory fines for non-compliance with PCI, HIPAA, or other regulations. If your solution isn't interoperable or easy-to-use, you may waste a lot of money moving to a new solution.

Voice-over-IP (VoIP) has become the most popular approach to business telephone service for business in the United States. Phone service is the fastest growing part of our business and in almost all engagements with customers, VoIP is what they are choosing. 

36% of businesses have made the switch to cloud phones, according to a recent survey. That means though many have switched, many more customers remain to migrate from analog or PRI phone systems to a VoIP-based system. 

Internet-based phone technology is now 20 years old. In fact, the first time Atlantech Online offered VoIP service to a customer was way back in 2002! That's over 15 years ago! Though progress was slow at first, it is now common knowledge that VoIP offers more potential benefits to businesses than ever before. Topping the list of benefits is cost savings, but in more and more cases, I see customers switching because of the greater flexibility in meeting the needs of their mobile and remote workforce.

Phone systems are a big investment with a long-term impact for small businesses. If you get the wrong system, you could have problems. If you go cheap, you could suffer additional expenses when you try to scale for growth. If you go expensive, you could pay for a lot of bells and whistles you don't need, which would put a strain on your budget.

Some of the features that you'll typically get with small business phone systems are:

A survey of small business security professionals revealed that distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks cost an average of $50,000 for mitigation, reduced employee productivity, and lost revenue.

If your organization has the problem of 50 grand laying around and can't find anything to do with it, just sit back and wait. Hackers will help you out with that issue.

How common are DDoS attacks? According to one research team’s estimate, one is launched every 23 seconds. And that interval is shrinking. As a 20+ year old ISP, Atlantech Online has been on the front lines of network security issues and worked diligently to reducing risk for us and our customers. This has become even more crucial since becoming a Telephone company, as well, in 2005. 

Lower cost is one of the most common reasons businesses switch to a Cloud Private Branch Exchange (PBX) phone system. Cloud-based business phones can be significantly less expensive than PRI Lines or other on-premises deployments. However, there are many other benefits of cloud communication tools besides lower cost.

According to the CompTIA 2018 Cloud Computing Trends Research survey, the top business benefits of cloud adoption include:

• Simplicity and speed in adopting new features
• The ability to add new capabilities
• Modernizing legacy IT environments
• Avoidance of software upgrades and licensing fees

These benefits can all facilitate business agility, which is a competitive advantage. With a Cloud PBX phone system, organizations can achieve flexible scalability. Unlike with traditional PBX systems, new features can be added immediately without having to purchase equipment or pay licensing fees. A single Cloud PBX phone system can expand from 150 users to 300 without having to add new features.

Primary Rate Interface (PRI) circuits are a well-established technology for business phone systems. Investing in PRI can seem like a low-risk way to meet your company’s need for reliable, quality voice communications.

While PRI circuits are stable, they have some limitations compared to alternatives such as SIP Trunking for business. Before investing in PRI Lines, it's important to understand costs, how the technology works, and potential challenges.

For some specialized use cases, a PRI circuit is the right choice. To determine whether your business is best served by PRI, SIP, or a hybrid mixture of cloud and traditional phone technology

Today's business communications involve a lot more than just voice calls. While phones are still a critical tool for communications, professionals use a lot of different technologies to converse. In a given day, it's not uncommon for the average employee to rely on phones, email, mobile apps, chat, text, and video conferencing.

Recent technological advancements have expanded the options companies have in business phone systems. Increasingly, organizations are switching from dated options like Primary Rate Interface (PRI lines) to more integrated options like Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to save costs.

Switching to internet-based phones is the right choice for some companies, but VoIP-only isn’t a robust enough solution for many businesses today. Many organizations can benefit more from a Unified Communications approach, which supports voice, text, conferencing, mobility, and other forms of communication.

If you’re evaluating new business phone systems, you may be wondering what the difference is between Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and VoIP, and which is best.