Mark Collier, CTO of SecureLogix and co-author of Hacking Exposed-VoIP, found a silver lining though. In his blog, Collier sums up the year in VoIP security for 2008. He notes that, overall, the year was kind of boring. That may not sound like a silver lining, but if the alternative was one of the ‘sky-is-falling’ FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) predictions being realized then suddenly boring is not so bad. Check out Collier’s blog for more details of the state of VoIP security in 2008 and links to some of the few attacks that were publicly disclosed.

Mark Collier, CTO of SecureLogix and co-author of Hacking Exposed: VoIP, noted in a recent blog post what a threat VoIP toll fraud is. Collier points out that, while there may be a variety of ways to attack a VoIP system, toll fraud is one of the few with a clear and direct motive. Collier refers to a white paper detailing a recent toll fraud VoIP breach in Germany, and also alludes to a similar situation here in the United States that resulted in $250,000 of toll fraud theft. You can get more details on these incidents and VoIP toll fraud in general by checking out this post on Collier’s blog.

This latest patent is their 14th. According to a MarketWatch article, the aspects of the latest patent include sensing and analyzing calls to determine call attributes, and performing security and/or management actions based upon the determined call attributes, including actions in response to attempts to encrypt a call or authenticate remote access, and monitoring of call content for keywords.

Pretty much since companies have been making the switch from traditional switched POTS (plain old telephone system) networks to VoIP, SecureLogix has been around to help secure communications. SecureLogix provides tools and services to analyze and protect both traditional and VoIP networks, and they are in the fairly unique position to assure security of both as organizations transition.

Mark Collier, SecureLogix CTO and VP of Engineering, is also known for having been co-author of McGraw-Hill’s Hacking VoIP Exposed, a part of the hugely successful Hacking Exposed series. The book contained some earlier versions of te tools released by SecureLogix. Collier maintains a blog called VoIP Security Blog.

In the world of VoIP (Voice over IP), there is a more or less agreed upon standard in RTP (Real-Time Transport Protocol). That is great for universal interoperability, but some have suggested that it may also pose a security risk for VoIP networks. The potential ‘monoculture’ of RTP could mean that any successful exploit against the protocol could cripple not one VoIP platform, but all VoIP platforms simultaneously.

I do agree that organizations need to be concerned with VoIP and unified communications security, but I believe that the ‘RTP monoculture’ issue is primarily FUD being used to sell VoIP security solutions from the vendors claiming the sky is falling. The thing is that monoculture is largely a myth. The ‘Microsoft monoculture’ was just anti-Microsoft FUD.

Each organization has different perimeter security, different products and applications inside the network, different security policies and controls across their environments. Yes, they may all use RTP, but everything else about their network and VoIP configuration is unique to each organization. Hopefully, if they have done their homework and put the right kinds of security controls in place, an RTP exploit that impacts one company won’t necessarily impact them.