Unified Communications: Click to talk » Sipera

Sipera Has SLiC Solution to Protect Smart Phone VoIP

Tony Bradley — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 03:03:38 +0000

One goal that many companies and unified communications vendors are striving for is the seamless integration of mobile phones with the unified communications environment.

Sipera, a leading provider of unified communications security solutions, has developed SLiC (Secure Live Communications). SLiC helps security managers manage the privacy, integrity, and other critical security elements related to integrating Wi-Fi, 3G, GPRS, and other mobile technologies into the enterprise communications infrastructure.

According to Sipera, SLiC is the first such solution available to help customers seamlessly combine smart phone and other mobile devices, and allow employees to use VoIP and other cloud-based communications while maintaining security and privacy.

Implementing Security When Its Too Late Is a Double-Negative

Tony Bradley — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 01:56:15 +0000

Implementing security controls after an attack or compromise of data is like shutting the barn door after the horse has already escaped…but worse.

Getting serious about VoIP and unified communications security after the whole solution is architected and implemented is costly enough. It is generally much easier and less expensive to implement sound security practices and controls organically as a part of the solution rather than tacking them on after the fact.

Sometimes architectural and procedural decisions made without security in mind are like water under the bridge and can’t be undone. You can put security controls in place, but they won’t be as effective as they could have been if security would have been a part of the initial design.

If you wait until after a successful attack or compromise of data you are just adding insult to injury. Its a double-negative. Now, on top of the more expensive, less effective security you were going to get by not thinking of security in the first place, you also have the expense of whatever financial impact or lost revenue the attack has, plus any potential damage to the reputation and credibility of the company.

Sipera VP of Marketing, Adam Boone, talked recently about just how costly it can be to forget about VoIP and unified communications security. Boone shared a story of a client victimized by toll fraud. Attackers placed 9,000 minutes of international calls turning the company’s normal phone bill of a couple hundred dollars to a $19,000 bill.

That’s $19,000 the company had to eat, on top of any security solutions it chose to implement to prevent similar attacks in the future. Shutting the door before the horse escaped would have saved it at least $19,000.

Is your VoIP or unified communications infrastructure secure? Are you planning to figure out the answer to that question now, or after it is compromised?

University Campuses Deploy Secure Unified Communications

Tony Bradley — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:35:25 +0000

In many respects comanies have it easy. Not that organizations don’t struggle as well to keep systems as homogenous as possible, but some for some entities- such as college and university campuses- it is virtually impossible. Universities want to be connected and provide cutting edge services for students and faculty, but providing a network infrastructure that supports that goal means opening the network to the external Internet and increasing the exposure to risk and potential compromise.

University campuses with a combined total of more than 250,000 students and faculty have chosen Sipera’s UC-Sec appliance to enable them to provide cutting edge unified communications while maintaining a secure environment.

“College campuses are progressive adopters of UC networks and applications, for both students and staff communicating internally and externally,” said Andy Asava, Vice President of Worldwide Sales at Sipera. “We have a number of IT professionals at our education customers who are sleeping better knowing Sipera is protecting their UC networks, students and staff, and mission-critical communications.”

Check out this press release for more details about how the Sipera UC-Sec appliance is being used to protect university campus communications.

Sipera Seeks to Bring PCI Compliance to UC

Tony Bradley — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:21:17 +0000

Sipera Systems, a leading Unified Communications (UC) security provider, has formed a partnership with TrustNet to boost the secure handling of credit card data in enterprises that are deploying VoIP and Unified Communications.

Together, Sipera and TrustNet will offer enterprises the guidance and functionality they need to ensure that their VoIP and UC implementations are consistent with security best practices and support their efforts to achieve and maintain PCI DSS compliance.

BCI Chooses Sipera for UC Security

Tony Bradley — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:55:23 +0000

Chile-based Banco de Credito e Inversiones (BCI) has chosen Sipera to secure their unified communications infrastructure. Using Sipera’s IPCS unified communications security appliances provides BCI with real-time unified communications security backed by the research and expertise of Sipera’s VIPER Lab.

Sipera also enables BCI to leverage more cost-effective SIP trunking rather than relying on trunk lines, and allows BCI to deploy unified communications more efficiently and provides quality of service monitoring and reporting that BCI didn’t previously have. You can learn more about Sipera unified communications security appliances and services at Voicecon in Orlando this week. Sipera is at Booth 1500.

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UCSniff Brings Vulnerability Scanning to VoIP

Tony Bradley — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 13:54:08 +0000

Sipera Viper Labs has developed a new VoIP security tool called UCSniff. UCSniff monitors VoIP communications and identifies weaknesses or holes in VoIP security which could potentially be exploited by an attacker. As this Dark Reading article points out, the tool will not identify whether an attack has occurred, or if there are any active exploits. It is a penetration testing and vulnerability scanning tool which will help VoIP and security administrators proactively scan their VoIP networks to verify integrity or identify areas that need to be secured.

Is Your UC Secure?

Tony Bradley — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:54:03 +0000

In order to provide comprehensive security, all traffic going into and out of the network should be monitored. Security applications and appliances have to scan and monitor for malware, data leakage, and other threats. With Unified Communications, the threat landscape is a little bigger and a little different. It is as important as ever to monitor traffic and maintain security, but unified communications demand higher bandwidth and QoS (Quality of Service) requirements than standard data traffic, making it an even greater challenge to secure and protect a UC environment while maintaining voice quality. Join Jason Ostrom, Director of the Sipera VIPER Lab, and Eric Winsborrow, Chief Marketing Officer for Sipera Systems and moderator, Erik Lanask, Group Managing Editor at Technology Marketing Corporation, on Tuesday, July 22 at 11:00am ET/ 8:00am PT.

Sipera Enhances UC Security

Tony Bradley — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:00:24 +0000

In the Press Release from Sipera, it explains that “For enterprises utilizing SIP trunks to connect to their service providers, Sipera not only offers comprehensive security for these SIP trunks, but also addresses key deployment issues by offering additional Session Border Control (SBC) functionality.” SIP trunking is one of the hot trends within the hot trends of VoIP and Unified Communications. Updates to the Sipera IPCS appliance include:

Certificate provisioning proxy for improved access control
HTTP/TFTP proxy for web services and configuration, and LDAP proxy for
directory services, for faster and easier deployment of remote phones
TLS/SRTP proxy for encryption, further ensuring communications privacy
Network, device, user, domain, and time of day granular policy
enforcement.