VOIP Security

VoIP technology has resulted in a booming service industry. This is due to the fact that in infrastructure already exists and it is more efficient than conventional telephony. The advantages being

Lower costs for telephone and Internet services
More features
Productivity gains

The growing popularity of VoIP has made it necessary to look at its security features. Security on the internet has always been a concern and VoIP shares the most of the security concerns associated with that of the Internet. Secure voip systems are sometimes managed. Managed security is another major issue and needs to be addressed properly. One company found that its security had been breached and found the security services offered were not of good quality. It is always best to have your security in you own hands than to give it to a third party. If a choice of third parties is made then choose a reputed company.

Security on VoIP Networks

Voip network security is as follows

Snooping and Spoofing

Traffic interception, capture and modification deals with

Eavesdropping on a conversation
interfering with audio streams
disconnection calls
rerouting others calls
answering others calls

Areas susceptible are the additional nodes of the network like

IP Phones
Broadband modems
soft switches
signaling gateways
media gateways
LAN segment (physical access to the segment is required)

These are susceptible because VOIP phone calls are easily decodable once captured as the signaling and transport protocol widely used has no security mechanism. Measures to reduce or eliminate the problems are:

Physical Security depends on the location of the Ethernet switch and its constant monitoring. Hubs are more vulnerable.
Better authentication and encryptions standards in the protocols used. IP-VPN could be used for Voice calls.
Encryption is better but is not yet widely accepted standard.
For Wi-Fi and other wireless networks securing these is important to security of the enterprise.

DoS-Denial of Service or DDoS-Distributed Denial of Service

Denial of the following service can occur

e-mails
file transfers
web-page requests
voice calls
Use of the Networks(internet/intranet/wireless network)

Areas susceptible to this are

Spamming over internet telephony (SPIT) is spam voice mails to fill the Voice Mail box. Telemarketing through voice signals is another source of spam.
Enterprises that have network connections.
Internet Service provides when their lines get congested

Those who are susceptible are those who do not use Quality of service Techniques on their enterprise or service networks. Countermeasures for DoS are built-in for some session border controllers. Other methods to ensure traffic does not get congested on a network are