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Secure & Private Communications |
Security Issues
The issues around security of a VOIP/SIP implementation are
plentiful. First and foremost, your voice travels over a data network,
specifically, an Internet Protocol (IP) network. Due to advancements
in network bandwidth over the past 15 years, there is a plethora of
data network bandwidth available for both public and private
communications. The economics have driven the cost down to commodity
levels when compared with IP network deployment 15 years ago. Fiber to
the desktop in the Fortune 250 and even fiber to the home are becoming
the norm.
In leveraging this inexpensive commodity, the security issues
surrounding IP networks all apply when these networks are utilized for
VOIP implementations. These issues include but are not limited to:
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Eavesdropping / Voice Privacy – the ability to record or listen into conversations
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Fraud – injecting voice in an existing stream of voice communications
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Denial of Service
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Vishing –
the utilization of VOIP services by someone other than the account
holder or the identification of account information by someone other
than the account holder
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Spam over Internet Telephony (SPIT)
The problem with VOIP spam and normal content filtering: it just
doesn’t work. A normal content filter won't work. Some pin their
hopes on speech recognition, but it is more likely that companies will
use traffic analysis to identify where the SPIT is coming from and
block traffic coming from compromised servers. Therefore your
requirement for stopping the security issues associated with VOIP
requires extraordinary efforts from vendors and network vendors.
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