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Locking Down Your VoIP Network

It is difficult to completely isolate a voice network or VoIP server. By design they are intended to initiate and receive communications from the outside world. Attackers know this as well which is why VoIP servers represent an attractive target.

There is a variety of information that can be gathered by an attacker just by sniffing network traffic and placing calls to your network. There are also tools available to enable attackers to conduct vulnerability assessments and penetration tests against your voice network to find the weaknesses.

Read Locking Down VoIP for more about the security issues facing VoIP networks and the steps you should take to proactively identify and secure any holes in your voice infrastructure.

The Double-Edged Sword of Unified Communications

Unified communications is more than just a collection of whiz-bang tools or a hot new technology. Done right, unified communications can help an organization save significant amounts of money while simultaneously streamlining business processes and enabling innovative new communications tools adapted to the needs of the business.

The blade of that sword cuts both ways though. The downside is that merging the traditionally separate voice and data networks exposes each to the risks of the other and creates new vulnerabilities and exploits unique to the merged voice and data infrastructure. Read Voice Convergence Saves Money, Increases Risk for more about the security issues you should be aware of.

Is VoIP Ready for Mission-Critical Primetime?

For most businesses, VoIP offers a compelling business argument. Merging the voice network with the data network means only implementing one hardware and wiring infrastructure. VoIP systems are easier to administer and maintain that traditional PSTN phones. The list goes on and on.

VoIP is not without its issues though, one of which would be having all of your proverbial eggs in a single basket- the network. Hopefully an enterprise network is relatively stable, but you still have to consider the possibility of a complete network outage and what that does for communications. Certain fields- emergency response, medical care facilities, banking and finance, etc. - can not afford to be without communications even for a minute. A recent ZDNet article addressed some of these concerns.

There is no way to truly guarantee that communications will be available 100% of the time. However, if the weaknesses of the network and the VoIP communications are properly considered and addressed I believe that a very high availability can be achieved. The technologies and level of redundancy required to achieve that availability are costly though and add to the TCO (total cost of ownership) of the VoIP solution and impact the ROI (return on investment), possibly negating many of the VoIP advantages and making the case for VoIP a harder sell.

Regardless of the industry that VoIP is being implemented in, sound network security practices should be followed. For VoIP networks, segmenting VoIP traffic on separate VLAN’s and encrypting voice communications provide additional security. However, enterprises should also consider the potential for a network-wide outage making VoIP unavailable and have a written policy for how to handle critical communications in the event that such a catastrophe occurs.