Prism program reveals security problems of Skype

One of the biggest revelations of the Edward Snowden NSA leak scandal has been the Prism program. At its core, it is a mass electronic surveillance system where companies like Facebook, Skype and Microsoft were approached by the U.S. government's surveillance community for information on its users.

Where VoIP technology comes into play here is with the involvement of Skype. As a popular consumer version of the technology, it was the first exposure to the internet-based phone system for many individuals. Using the free service to communicate with friends and family members helped solidify the capabilities of the system in the business world and in some instance became a company tool.

However, according to a recent ComputerWorld article, Skype may have been one of the worst offenders when it comes to breaching customer's privacy and turning information over to the government.

"The NSA has devoted substantial efforts in the last two years to work with Microsoft to ensure increased access to Skype, which has an estimated 663 million global users," the article reads. "One document boasts that Prism monitoring of Skype video production has roughly tripled since a new capability was added on 14 July 2012."

While the benefits of a free VoIP service may help people stay connected, businesses need to implement a more robust solution that can not only work for a team of employees but also be secure enough to keep company information safe. By partnering with an IT consulting firm that specializes in business VoIP technology, any company can deploy the solution and improve its efforts.

From our offices in Dayton, Columbus, Cincinnati and Cleveland, PRO OnCall is your single-source technology consulting service, offering managed IT support, unified communications solutions and on-call IT support.