TMCnews Featured Article
June 08, 2011
VoIP Management Can Help to Eliminate Risks on Open Platform
By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a technology platform that companies continue to implement to streamline their communications and reduce the overall costs associated with this channel. Too often, however, these companies are putting their voice communications on their data network without properly securing either one. The result puts the company and its communications at risk.
This challenge was explored in a recent Gadget post, stressing how too many business users are focused on the functionality of the VoIP platform, ignoring the necessary security requirements. As functionality increases, it is common for the risk associated with the lack of security to increase. When a company leverages proper VoIP management, however, hacks on VoIP users can be prevented.
Graeme Victor, CEO of telecommunications solutions company Du Pont Telecom (News - Alert), stresses the importance of VoIP management to ensure that the company does not implement an approach that is dangerously short-sighted. Even with the advantages that VoIP can offer to a business, the associated risk demands a proactive approach that must begin with a risk analysis to protect against attacks.
Victor stressed that VoIP systems are significantly more vulnerable as compared with traditional analogue telephone systems. To clarify, VoIP management focuses on the open network as signaling and data transmission takes place over the public Internet. In addition, the locations of the end-devices involved are not definable. The analogue system, however, operates in a closed network and end devices are in defined locations.
The VoIP network opens up the company to a number of different vulnerabilities, including those presented by servers, workstations and network equipment as they can easily provide the platform for an attack on the network as a whole. VoIP management should identify those threats and implement the proper protection.
Vulnerabilities also exist in the configuration and management of VoIP devices and VoIP management views these devices as an extension of the network infrastructure to lock them down. Denial of Service and identity theft can also present threats to the VoIP application. The result can be users perceive unavailable service or current calls can be disconnected.
VoIP management can also fight content-based threats, attackers that try to bypass certain network protection mechanisms, an attacker scan of the network to locate easily accessible VoIP devices, unprotected VoIP softphone software and VoIP call interception and eavesdropping.
In short, it is critical that companies using VoIP technology implement a VoIP management platform to protect the vulnerable network. The result can be seamless communicates that are not at risk.
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Juliana Kenny
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