The 2023 Voice Network Threat Survey, published today by Mutare Inc., the industry leader in voice threat defence with headquarters in Chicago, revealed that many industries are still unsure of how to effectively defend against voice network attacks.

Mutare gathered responses from professionals in cybersecurity and IT, 40% of whom hold leadership positions, at RSAC, Cisco Live, and Customer Contact Week (CCW), and discovered that 24% of respondents no longer answer their business phone as the number of telemarketers has skyrocketed recently. The severity of this issue is highlighted by the fact that 100% of respondents said they had been negatively impacted by voice threats. These threats include robocalls, spoof calls, scam calls, spam calls, spam storms, vishing (voice phishing), smishing (SMS, or text, phishing), and social engineering.

The objective of the second annual Voice Network Threat Survey was to learn more about the effects that obtrusive and malicious calls are having on businesses in various industries as well as the precautions that companies are taking to protect themselves from external threats. It was discovered that people are actively altering their voice channel interactions. An additional 46% of respondents said they were wary of incoming calls, which is in addition to the 24% of people who don't answer their business phone. The problem has been addressed by training for about half of the respondents, but training alone is insufficient to deal with this evolving and growing threat.

According to this year's survey, an average of 10% of calls across all industries are unwanted, continuing a trend of year over year growth in Mutare's Index of Unwanted Traffic. A startling 28% of respondents don't know how much of their voice traffic is unwanted, and 31% think it's more than one in ten, indicating that even though people are aware of the issue, they don't know how to quantify it. A voice-based attack was confirmed by 19% of respondents—nearly 1 in 5—in the last 12 months, but 49% of respondents said their organisation had not. A staggering 37% of respondents did not know if their organisation had been attacked, which may be a sign that businesses are reluctant to share security incident information, even with their own employees.

The majority of respondents (39%) came from the technology and innovation sector, which includes a wide range of businesses, including government, financial services, healthcare, education, utilities and energy, manufacturing, retail, and law.

85% of those polled agreed that it was time to elevate voice as a threat vector, but the survey found that few proactive, technical solutions—which are easily accessible—were being used to combat the issue.

For more information, visit: https://www.mutare.com/executive-report-voice-network-threat-survey-2023/

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