Voip security fear

Too many vendors and much of the media create unnecessary fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) around VoIP. No network manager wants to deploy VoIP and have a security incident compromise the call quality so FUD-based selling works well with VoIP. Information theft and unauthorized network access are much bigger concerns to corporations than eavesdropping, spam over IP telephony or unauthorized calls. Keep all the layers of your network protected with appropriate security measures and tools and you will protect yourselves against most of the issues that impact VoIP from a security perspective.

Implement VLANs to separate voice and data traffic. Many of the perceived VoIP threats stem from a hacker’s ability to compromise the call. The use of VLANs can resolve the majority of VoIP concerns. It’s important to note that VLANs only work with IP phones and will not work with softphones. Windows does not support VLAN tagging so the voice and data traffic are tagged with the same VLAN identifier.

Implement quality of service (QoS) to prioritize traffic in the voice VLAN. This will prevent malicious traffic from flooding the network and degrading the call quality. QoS should be implemented on the LAN and WAN.

Related posts:

1. Voip vulnerabilities
2. SANS Top 20 Internet Security Attack Target List for 2006 includes VoIP for the first time
3. The VOIP attack that could happen
4. VoIP and Distributed Denial of Service Attacks
5. FaceTime stackles Skype security fears
6. FaceTime tackles Skype security fears

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