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Securing your SBC Microsoft Teams Direct Routing Effectively

In Microsoft Teams
March 3, 2020
3 Min Read
S

Microsoft Teams Direct Routing is being opted as the most recent business collaboration solution in the realm of digital communication. IT experts who deploy Direct Routing are aware of SBC security issues that arise as soon as they deploy the solution in place. A secure VoIP solution is the ultimate necessity of a company to thwart the increasing VoIP attacks emerging each day. Let’s have a look at how Microsoft deals with SBC security in its Microsoft Teams Direct Routing Solution.

The “friendly” attacks during configuration

An IT communications expert who was hired to deploy Microsoft Teams Direct routing in a cloud business, narrates his experience:

“While I was deploying Microsoft Teams Direct Routing with SIP trunks and a Session Border Controller (SBC), I happened to sense various SBC security vulnerabilities soon after I turned up the public interface. Long before the Teams configuration was complete there appeared a number of OPTIONS requests and huge SIP traffic from unknown sources. This traffic was supported by IP addresses trying to connect to my systems from around the world via malicious SIP scripting and scanning utilities. It was an alarming situation for me. Headers like “SIP Vicious”, “friendly-scanner”, and “PPLSIP”.

This scenario is not a unique one. All over the internet, attackers are in search of vulnerabilities. While SBCs are scanned in order to attempt hijack calling capabilities, admins can take this opportunity while deploying Microsoft Teams Direct Routing to configure and test the security rules provided by Direct Routing. There are two ways to secure your system: by configuring firewall and using Malicious Signatures feature.

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Teams Direct Routing solutions to boost your business productivity

A properly configured Firewall, is your best friend forever

There are options to configure a Firewall for better security. All you have to do is configure the rules properly in the following manner:

  1. Exclude the LAN interface from Firewall list
  2. Allow external DNS lookups
  3. Allow Teams traffic
  4. Allow Signaling and RTP traffic
  5. In the final step, configure using: Block All others option.

Once these configurations are in place, you will no longer see or experience any malicious attempts. In fact, you will be able to see the number of attempts being blocked/dropped is increasing.

The Malicious Signatures feature for better security

A Malicious Signatures feature blocks all the attempts coming from malicious signatures and only allows the attempts from legitimate signatures. To make use of this feature, the admin has to configure a message policy. After this he has to malicious signatures database. Using this message policy, you can drop malicious SIP messages and set well defined limits. This policy can be assigned to the concerned SIP trunk.

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Insight to employee experience with Microsoft teams and MachCloud

MachCloud Direct Routing powered by Microsoft Teams

MachCloud is a robust digital communication platform offering Teams Direct Routing, Cloud PBX, SIP Trunking and a multitude of business communications solutions like MachCloud and MachCloud Solution for Microsoft Teams. Resellers have a chance to boost up their revenue streams with MachCloud’s Office 365 reselling. With MachCloud’s direct routing, you can experience the true essence of enterprise calling with a variety of features like staying in control of your calls, memos and many other services both for both local and international clients. It is an all-in-one telephony platform for modern day business collaboration needs.

Get your hands-on Microsoft Teams Direct Routing via MachCloud and experience the top-notch business collaboration solution for better business productivity.

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A look into of SIP Trunk Costs

In SIP Trunking
June 19, 2019
3 Min Read
A

The shift to digital communication is trending in the business space. In fact, many businesses have upgraded their communication infrastructure towards hosted VoIP or SIP trunking.  The biggest motivation in this business shift is the cost that digital communication saves for companies like SIP Trunk Costs. It is predicted that the end of PSTN networks will be experienced in the next decade which means that digital communications are here to stay for longer.

How Much Money Can a SIP Trunk Service Save You?

In reality, there is no exact amount that experts can tell that’ll give you an estimate on cost savings. The cost that you save depends upon the size of your enterprise and the nature of your business that eventually decides what your requirements on unified communications are. Another big factor that decides the SIP Trunk Costs or costs of your digital communications is the current status of your communication infrastructure. Many a times, the current infrastructure is so orthodox that upgrading the whole infrastructure requires much investment in terms of cost which means that for the first few months, the shift to digital communications would look costly, but in the longer run, it is going to save you costs for sure.

SIP Trunk Costs

When it comes to SIP Trunking, there are many costs that one should expect while implementing the Trunk. This includes cost of DID numbers, direct and indirect costs of buying the trunks, porting your old numbers, long distance rates and actual calling charges.

Typically, the initial investment cost ranges between $10 – $150 (one time) and monthly it ranges from $25 – $50 per trunk depending upon the size of your business and the requirements of communication within the organization.

There are many ways to save costs with SIP Trunks.

SIP Trunks Costs Less on Calls

With SIP Trunks, calls are transmitted via the internet directly, bypassing the local phone company. Hence the charges of local phone company are diminished in using SIP Trunks. This makes calls relatively cheaper especially for long-distances.

Zero Capital Costs

With SIP Trunks, you don’t have to buy physical hardware to initiate calls. This saves you huge bucks. Since SIP trunk is just a virtual line that connects your business to your vendor, you can easily make use of multimedia lines for video conferencing, virtual meetings software etc. without deploying any additional hardware at your end.

Reasonable Call Rates

The best part of adopting SIP trunks is that internal calls are free. This means, employee to employee communication is not charged with any fee and there is no SIP Trunk Costs for internal communication. Long-distance calls are also charged with lower rates as compared to other technologies.

MachCloud – The Ultimate Next-Gen UC Provider for Your Business

MachCloud offers a wide range of unified communication tools that is suitable for any type of business. Whether it is Hosted Voice, SIP Trunks, Cloud PBX or other Cloud services, MachCloud has got you covered. With MachCloud, you can resell Office 365, get all-in-one bundle and save costs on Support. With no internal costs and zero upfront fees, MachCloud offers pocket-friendly solutions suitable for all types of businesses from SMEs to enterprises. Stick around for more updates on exciting services of MachCloud which can fulfill your business digital communication needs in a trendy manner.

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An essential guide to finding the Best SIP Trunk Provider for your Cloud Business

In SIP Trunking
April 11, 2019
4 Min Read
A

Selecting the right SIP Trunk Provider for your cloud business is not less than a challenge. It becomes a tougher decision to make especially if you entrepreneurs have no previous background knowledge of SIP trunking. Today, we are going to tell you what are the basic factors that you need to take into account sip trunking providerwhile selecting the best SIP Trunk Provider for Business.

Before we dive into the factors that make you decide an SIP trunking provider, it is important that you should know what exactly the responsibilities of a SIP trunking provider are for business. Since businesses have shifted to the cloud, the importance of unified communication has been increased and SIP trunking tops the list of cloud business needs for streamlined cloud business ops. In essence, an SIP Trunk Provider provides your enterprise the ability to use VoIP connected to a private branch exchange (PBX) and a decent Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). So, essentially a SIP Provider plays a vital role in the internal and external communications within and outside your organization.

So, what to look for in the best SIP Trunk Provider for your cloud business? Here are 7 essential factors to look for:

  • Unified Cloud Business Communications

    Unified communications provide both Real-Time communication, like Calls and instant messaging, video conferencing and other, and non-Real-Time communication like Email, social media etc. UC is a popular term nowadays and is considered as the backbone of any business organization.

  • Security

    Since cyber-attacks and cyber security needs are both increasing with each passing year, Security is an important factor in taking decisions about SIP Trunk Provider for business. The best SIP Provider will be all time active and try to reduce clients’ risk to communication at all times. In addition to this, they serve to prevent DoS attacks and prevent attacks due to spamming techniques.

  • Reliability

    A decent level of reliability is required in order to continue with a SIP Trunk provider for cloud business. This is another very basic and common requirement for cloud businesses of today. Only those providers are successful and best in market, that have redundant hardware to keep things up at your end while things are down at their end.

  • QoS

    Factor like low latency, less jitter, no packet loss and burstienss play an important role in the overall quality of Service. A good provider always implements the best infrastructure to minimize jitter and improve QoS for better videoconferencing, calls and other communication channels for its clients.

  • Compatibility

    SIP Trunk providers must have equipment installed that is compatible with your PBX technology. In this way, you won’t fall prey to compatibility issues in your unified cloud business solutions.

  • Customer support

    The best SIP trunk providers for business provide after deployment support and also answer your general queries. You may be needing support anytime of the day and an ideal SIP trunk provider has a team of experts that assists customers with their technical issues at any time of the day.

  • SLAs

    Service level agreements (SLAs) have generally no link to the quality of a service a Provider can provide, however, most professional and best in market Providers offer an SLA. Best-of-class Providers also guarantee their customers to provide 99.99% uptime.

MachCloud – the best SIP Trunk Provider for business

MachCloud is a complete service management and communication delivery platform. It provides top of the line unified communication service management including SIP trunking, PSTN, Hosted Voice, Microsoft Skype4B and many more options for your business. With decent pricing and plans for your business, MachCloud is a one size fits all for cloud providers. In addition to this, MachCloud offers Azure services, Dynamics 365 services, Microsoft Office 365 services and excellent customer support services that facilitate your business in cloud business growth.

Get your hands on MachCloud and experience the most streamline unified communication and SIP Trunk experience.

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The essential guide to SIP trunking Pros and Cons

In SIP Trunking
March 20, 2019
4 Min Read
T

Entrepreneurs who are familiar with enterprise phone systems know how SIP Trunking pros and cons since SIP trunking are trending in the market. In fact, the phone connections which include physical lines connected to a PBX are now replaced with IP based connections in most of the enterprises and most organizations are now opting for SIP trunks because it is high-time entrepreneurs take decisions to switch to the technology of the future for their cloud business.

Before implementing any new technology into the organization, it is important to know SIP trunking Pros and cons and does a cost-benefit analysis. Today in this blog post, we tell you about various advantages you get while opting for SIP trunking and other drawbacks that are important to know so that you are prepared for the unwanted.

SIP Trunking Cons

The cost of implementation

By opting for SIP trunking, there is not only a cost of implementation, but there are recurring costs too. There are monthly subscriptions with variable costs. Some of the costs billing is directly proportional to the amount volume of costs, the more the calls, the higher would be the bill.

Maintenance requirements

Another drawback is the maintenance requirement for on-premise setups. There are two ways to tackle this, either employ experts for decent maintenance over time or opt for companies who outsource maintenance services, both can become expensive one way or another.

Advanced planning required

You need to research more before you actually get landed on the most optimal solution for your organization. The decisions like the architecture of SIP, centralized versus distributed, plans about capacity, peak traffic estimates, network load etc. and the important aspect of security have to be made within the organization.

SIP Trunking Pros

The cut-down costs

While the cost is viewed as a drawback, most enterprises look to it as a benefit. Taken a decade into account, the overall costs of SIP trunks are less as compared to other technologies like VoIP in ten years. In other words, they have a promising effect on the company finances over a longer period of time.

Customizability

One of the major SIP trunking pros include the factor of high customization that is not found in hosted services other than SIP trunks. With this option, cloud business can now choose to control options like upgrade options, security updates, latest patches and many more, all this without the involvement of an external vendor.

Productivity

SIP trunking, along with Unified communication, give the benefit of increased productivity. There is more collaboration and access to customers and partners saves time on collaborative projects.

MachCloud: The promising SIP trunking solution for your Cloud Business

MachCloud is your gateway to excel in Service management and Communication delivery. With offerings like services from Microsoft 365, Skype4B, SIP Trunking and Hosted Voice, MachCloud is the most promising Office 365 Services and SIP trunking provider in market for your cloud business.

Major services offered by this revolutionized platform include: Office 365 on Boarding, Office 365 Migration and Office 365 Admin as service. CSPs can start selling Office 365 & VOIP Services by Partnering as a Private Label partner or a Trusted Advisor. With best experts form the industry on board, MachCloud gives excellent customer support and technical assistance at any point of time. The Self-service control panel works wonders which offers premium office 365 experience.

There are many flexible plans to choose from this multinational cloud platform. It also offers trusted infrastructural deployment with the best architects in the market. With this approach, things are managed proactively and delivered seamlessly. It’s the next level agile platform that meets your current and future cloud business needs. Here’s your chance to take the most promising services and implement them on your cloud business.

 

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7 key terms to unleash the technology behind Unified communications

In Azure, Business Communication, Cloud PBX, Dynamics 365, Hosted Voice, PBX, SIP Trunking, Unified Communications, VOIP
March 5, 2019
5 Min Read
7

Looks like the times of cloud communications are advancing towards unified communications as discussed heatedly in the past. The technologies like video conferencing, mobility, and omnichannel contact centers, UC APIs, and of course the CCaaS and UCaaS hosted solutions are now in the mainstream pertaining to the high demand of business centric communications platforms. With the rise of high quality video streaming needs and workspaces not being confined to mere office desktops but have expanded over hosted workplace solutions, Teams and projects management demands much more than just an office suite to meet-state-of-the-art challenges, it needs something robust. It requires Unified communications.

The basic requirement which has driven unified communications to this stage is that communication requires minimal jitter, minimum delay/latency, and minimum packet loss. This forms the basis of how communications have evolved from simple Phone systems, in which the digital aspects had been included in order to make streamline communications as compared to analogue communications, towards PSTN, where wired connections were established with the help of circuits to streamline voice over a phone assigning Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) to each device for better access, to Voice over IP (VoIP)where The Internet was introduced for cost-effective business communication in a streamlined manner. Yet, with internet the requirement of less jitter/delay/packet loss was a big challenge.

To tackle that challenge, IP PBX systems and Hosted PBX systems are introduced that take business communication one step towards unified communications as of today. The premise-based IP PBX system was developed with LAN and IP technologies combined whereas the hosted PBX is a more robust and cost-effective solution, hosted in the cloud and matured over the years, to serve the purpose. Amongst IP PBX systems and Hosted PBX systems, deployment decisions can be taken based on Upfront Cost, Recurring cost, Technology Infrastructure and TCO.

Moving fast forward, SIP trunking is the most promising technology of today. Been made the new standard as the phone call protocol of choice replacing the traditional PSTN systems, SIP makes best-in-breed voice and Internet solutions possible for modern business voice, video and multi-party conference call needs. A few SIP trunking features include:

  • Minutes don’t matter:  with SIP trunking, you are offered unlimited inbound and outbound phone calls.
  • Bye-bye hardware: Traditional Line cards are not needed in most cases now, so there is no hi-fi infrastructure establishment needs for providers. Hosted SIP is the solution that eliminated hardware needs yet providing best voice and multi conferencing needs efficiently.
  • Geographic Resilience: the infrastructure in the cloud is established with Disaster recovery feature been kept in mind. Hence, you are always connected even under a catastrophic event.
  • Calls info: calls information can be achieved from Caller ID, Caller Name ID DID and virtual phone number features are present in SIP trunking.
  • Geographic Location Independence: with the flexibility of call routing through an IP, it doesn’t matter where you are in the world. The service is highly available wherever you are.

Who offer these services?

Telco’s and SIP providers offer these call and conferencing services with affordable rates that make you save up to 50% on your business phone bill every month. These providers offer Call volume and internet connection that is all you need for a better communication experience. There are two types of providers:

  • Single Solution Provider: the ones who offer both SIP trunks and data circuits. They provide bundles pricing offers, better quality and the best part is, if there’s an issue there’s only “one throat to choke”.
  • Over The Top (OTT) provide SIP trunking over another data carrier circuit. Companies like Netflix made the term OOT mainstream over the internet. With these providers, you can implement solutions from Best of Breed Providers both in terms of quality and pricing. And with this approach, you can always choose to discontinue the service that isn’t working too well.

The Quest for best continues

We’re old enough to remember the most used tagline in every phone call in the 90’s:

‘Can you hear me now?’

But not anymore; the journey to achieve best communication method continues all these years and it gets us landed into the world of Unified communications. Hosted SIP, VoIP, inherent multiple-carrier solutions, IP PBX, Hosted PBX and other terms are basic building blocks of Unified communications. You can call it the communication of “everything”. Telco’s and providers are more enthusiastic to offer unified communication systems like never before with better user experience and high quality services.

MachCloud Solutions: Your Gateway to a Successful Business Communication

And this is where we announce MachCloud: The all-in-one unique solution which offers best VoIP and SIP trunking with affordable rates and best pricing plans in the market. The reliable Provider has the best experts from the industry that assist the customers with 24/7 support. MachCloud is a complete Service management and communication delivery platform, exactly the platform needed for business current and future unified communication needs. From Hosted Voice, SIP trunking, MachCloud also offers service from Microsoft Azure, Office 365, Dynamics 365 and others. Here’s your chance to discover what more your business is capable of using this integrated platform.

 

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