The creation of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) brought with it a wealth of benefits

 The creation of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) brought with it a wealth of benefits. By leveraging VoIP, the phone system can leverage the same IP-network that PCs and business applications use. This not only reduces infrastructure costs but also links multiple business locations across the wide-area network (WAN) to bring employees "on-net" and eliminate the expense of internal communications. PSTN access also became VoIP-enabled, allowing session initiation protocol (SIP) trunk providers to deliver dial tone service to businesses without the need for dedicated PSTN lines or circuits.

VoIP has ultimately enabled most of what many people take for granted, such as video conferencing with customers across the Internet; home working for employees and call center agents; and mobile apps that make business extensions and calling features accessible on smartphones.

Businesses have come to rely on VoIP-based, highly-connected communications and collaboration solutions to accelerate decision making, connect key stakeholders from across the globe, streamline workflows and improve the customers' experiences.

Now more than ever, reliable business communications are mission-critical for any organization, which makes them an elevated target for cyber attacks. By gaining access to a business's communications tools, hackers can not only disrupt an organization's communications or rack up expensive phone charges similar to legacy computer science degree jobs, but also potentially eavesdrop on a company's meetings to glean proprietary information, collect call records that can identify customer information, or disrupt the work of employees.