Voice over internet Protocol (VoIP) provider Skype, an eBay subsidiary, was out of service for a couple of days last week. Before you get all excited and turned off over VoIP because of this, bear in mind that things are not that much different on wireline phone service. I used to work for a major wireline telephone company, and several smaller wireline competitors. Regular wired phone service can go out for days at a time due to natural disaster, work stoppages by labor unions, backhoe fade (cable cuts), or poorly timed system upgrades or conversions. I’ve seen it happen. So Skype was down for a day and a half – what? No cell phone? No wireline backup? If your business "depends" on a certain service, you ought to have backup contingencies in place to take over in the event of a failure like this.
A Skype business user named "sam" posted these comments on the ComputerWorld message board:
I have 4 Skype phone numbers and they continued to work like a champ for me, because I set up call forwarding to my cellphone. No glitches, seriously.
Skype wouldn’t login, like for everyone else, but at least I didn’t miss a single call so far as I can tell. And I have nationwide free calling on my cellphone, so the glitch they had didn’t make any real problems for me.
I think people are using Skype as a whipping boy because it was down, but, really, if you didn’t set up call forwarding and you’re relying on Skype then its your own fault. Get over it.
Here is a person who made a successful adjustment to the outage, due to his prior planning. All I can say is – way to go!
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About the Author:
I am a cybersecurity and IT instructor, cybersecurity analyst, pen-tester, trainer, and speaker. I am an owner of the WyzCo Group Inc. In addition to consulting on security products and services, I also conduct security audits, compliance audits, vulnerability assessments and penetration tests. I also teach Cybersecurity Awareness Training classes. I work as an information technology and cybersecurity instructor for several training and certification organizations. I have worked in corporate, military, government, and workforce development training environments I am a frequent speaker at professional conferences such as the Minnesota Bloggers Conference, Secure360 Security Conference in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, the (ISC)2 World Congress 2016, and the ISSA International Conference 2017, and many local community organizations, including Chambers of Commerce, SCORE, and several school districts. I have been blogging on cybersecurity since 2006 at http://wyzguyscybersecurity.com