The networking world is all about data and the communications space is no exception. Voice and messaging are increasingly becoming IP-based applications and services, essentially making them just another type of data traversing increasingly crowded networks.
We recently discussed the role of voice and messaging in the context of the so-called “Fourth Wave of Mobile Communications,” and how enterprises and service providers alike are failing to single out communications services since they fall under the much larger purview of data. But VoIP brings with it new challenges, particularly when it comes to security, management and monitoring of voice services.
As a growing number of carriers migrate their legacy voice networks over to Session Initiation Protocol (News - Alert) (SIP) trunking for voice and unified communications (UC), security is becoming a pretty big issue. Since everything is being sent over networks as data, VoIP is subject to denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, ID spoofing, hacking and other malicious activities.
Session border controllers (SBCs) do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to VoIP and can act like firewalls, offering monitoring, management and security. Best of all, they are scalable, and can provide complete encryption of IP-based voice calls. They also offer centralized management of resources, shifting traffic to other areas of the network in the event of an attack to ensure performance isn’t impacted. SBC may also be provided as a service, a compelling option from a cost and management standpoint as more organizations shift computing and resources to the cloud.
While voice may in fact be just another chunk of data traveling on busy and growing networks, VoIP has unique challenges that can’t be overlooked. Organizations that make the move to VoIP need to prioritize security, monitoring and management to protect against breaches and the potential loss of valuable data, time and money.
Edited by Alicia Young