Recently BT released a document via their website explaining Voice Over IP (VOIP) to its customers and made some stark predictions for the future as well as dispelling many myths about Voice Over IP.
Here are some extracts from their website.
They say -
VoIP take-up is growing rapidly and we expect to see almost half of small businesses in the UK using internet calling in the next year. BT is also investing £10 billion in its 21st Century Network (21CN) initiative, which will move the UK’straditional (PSTN) telephone network over to one that is entirely Internet Protocol (IP) based. The first PSTN customers moved over to 21CN in November 2006 and by 2012 all calls in the UK will be made over IP.
The majority of people first look at VoIP services because of the cost savings that are available, but this isn’t limited to calling other VoIP users. Many services offer reduced local and national call rates, along with capped prices for domestic, fixed-to-mobile and international calls.
One of the criticisms that has been leveled at VoIP services is that it is still a relatively new technology and voice quality isn’t quite as high as on conventional fixed-line telephone services. However, paid-for services from reputable suppliers are very much the same as fixed line and can be better than mobile reception. As with any new technology, in the early days VoIP services could be unreliable. However as the technology has matured, reliability has increased and is now at a level that is appropriate for business use.
VoIP services are not linked to a local exchange in the same way as traditional telephones. As a result, VoIP numbers do not have to be specific to a town or region, which gives companies the ability to choose the type of number they want to use, whether that is a geographic, VoIP (for example an 05 prefix) or national (for example an 0845 or 0800 number).
Extract from BT Article
by Barry Weaver Feb 2008
The number of malicious programs found online has reached an unprecedented high, say security firms. Reports vary but some estimates suggest there were five times as many variants of malicious programs in circulation in 2007 compared to 2006.
Security company Panda Software said it was getting more than 3,000 novel samples of so called malware every day.
Criminals pump out variants to fool anti-virus programs that work, in part, by spotting common characteristics.
Threat landscape
Security software testing organisation AV Test reported that it saw 5.49 million unique samples of malicious software in 2007 – five times more than the 972,606 it saw in 2006.
AV Test reached its total by analysing malicious programs and generating a digital fingerprint for each unique sample.
The organisation said the different ways malware can be packaged will mean some duplication in its figures, but the broad trend showed a steep rise.
The organisation uses the samples to test security programs to see how many they can spot and stop.
Panda Software said the number of malicious samples it received in 2007 was up ten fold on 2006. In a statement it said the rise represented a “malware epidemic”.
Finnish security firm F-Secure said it had seen a doubling in the number of pieces of malware it detected in 2007 compared to 2006.
Most of the malicious programs detected by these security organisations are aimed at the various versions of Microsoft’s Windows operating system.
The vast majority of these unique malicious programs will be made up of elements from older viruses that have been scrambled to look fresh.
“It started about nine months ago, in early 2007, we saw massive surges of new variants,” said Gerhard Eschelbeck, chief technology officer at anti-spyware firm Webroot.
“There are days when we see 1,000 or more new samples,” he said.
“It’s a low-effort high-frequency type threat,” he said. “There’s no completely ground-breaking new stuff out there.”
He added that hi-tech criminals were adopting several tactics to avoid being spotted by anti-virus programs which try to spot the “signature” of each malicious program they know about.
“Anti-virus relies on customers to submit samples,” said Mr Eschelbeck, “but with spyware you typically do not get samples because your customers do not know they are infected.”
Increasingly, security firms have turned to new techniques to combat the rise in malware variants. Some use heuristics, or rules of thumb, to spot programs that are similar rather than identical to the ones they have seen before.
Others are using behaviour blockers that shut down any program that shows malicious intent.
Feb 2007 – BBC
The government is to unveil new legislation that will force internet service providers to cut off people who illegally download music and movies, reports suggest.
Under the new legislation, reported in The Times, internet service providers will be legally required to take action against those downloading pirated materials. The new law will apparently work on a three strikes basis, with a first offence receiving a warning, a second offence a temporary ban, and a third resulting in a terminated internet contract. Apparently the government is also considering whether this information should be shared among the ISPs, which could effectively see certain users striken from the internet. The article goes on to claim that ISPs that fail to follow the guidelines will themselves be prosecuted. However, a number of sticking points remain in the scheme including the issue of who will be responsible for arbitrating disputed cases, for example, in cases of Wi-Fi piggybacking. The government has previously claimed that should ISPs not self regulate on the issue it would be willing to step in and take action, however, this is the first time details of a potential scheme have been released.
Speaking on the issue in the past ISPs have argued that they simply do not have the ability to track every file that passes along their network, while privacy advocates have slammed proposals to monitor internet traffic.
Feb 2008 – PC Pro
