Verizon Business enhances management portal
Verizon Business yesterday released a new integrated customer
center portal, allowing businesses to provision, manage, order, pay
and create reports for their communications services in a secure
online environment.
Users can personalize their view to better manage their networks
and applications. Other new capabilities include click-to-chat,
which allows customers to get rapid online help, and a new Quick
Status feature that lets customers view the status of their trouble
tickets before logging on. Verizon also announced that the
Dashboard is also now available to all Verizon Business customers,
giving them a real-time view of all of their global fault, alarm
and network performance and inventory information on a topology
map.
Business processes that can be conducted in the enhanced portal
include:
- Flexible self-management of a wide range of Verizon Business
products and services
- Seamless and secure access of critical data and tools to manage
that data
- Easy-to-use application and tools to help improve productivity
and efficiency
- Quick determination and allocation of resources where they are
needed most to help control costs
- A near real-time view of the network, via the Dashboard, which
gives global topology, rolling 30-day network availability and
trouble-ticket reporting
- Efficient and ecologically friendly paperless billing
options.
Research: Most Fortune 1000 and midsized businesses thinking
VoIP
New research from TheInfoPro indicated that 79% of enterprises have
VoIP in use today or have a policy or initiative to implement VoIP
when it's technically feasible.
According to TheInfoPro, an independent research company, the
study also found that 61% of Fortune 1000 and midsized enterprises
will take three years or more before a majority of their voice
traffic is handled through VoIP hardware.
These findings, part of TheInfoPro's Wave 2 Networking Study,
were derived from 126 hour-long interviews with networking
professionals from Fortune 1000 and midsized enterprises.
"Enterprises are aware that VoIP is the wave of the future in
voice networking, but they are struggling with justifying the cost
of a rapid rollout," Bill Trussell, managing director of
TheInfoPro's networking sector, said in a statement.
VoIP security threats still unknown: study
Analyst and consulting firm Ovum this week warned VoIP service
providers and enterprises that they must start taking steps to
minimize security risks now.
With such a large number of companies either new to IP telephony
or still considering adoption, many companies are focused on voice
quality and functionality issues instead of focusing on security,
according to Ovum. The companies that are thinking about security
are concerned mostly with disclosing sensitive information in phone
calls or unwanted phone calls instead of other potential threats,
the study said.
"We do not know which threats will become critical in VoIP or
how long the process will take, but it would be foolish to ignore
them," Graham Titterington, Ovum principal analyst and security
expert, said in a statement.
According to the study, two areas that are most at risk are the
integrity of the IP telephony systems and the data systems to which
they connect. The research indicates that specific risks include
spam, phishing, toll fraud and denial-of-service attacks.
"Because of their lack of awareness of such issues, users are
not demanding increased security in VoIP products and services,"
the study states. "As a result, security improvements are being
driven by the supply side of the industry -- the vendors and the IP
telephony service providers."
Titterington suggested that vendors focus on protection against
the specific risks instead of focusing on the public Internet. In
turn, enterprises have to establish what place there is for VoIP in
their activities and start to build up defenses and use filtering
technologies now.