In the age of VoIP when data and voice packets travel along the exact same cyber highway, it's natural that the amount security concerns is growing nft project. With increased information that may be intercepted, corrupted or accessed unlawfully, hackers do have more loopholes than ever to exploit for fun, or personal gain.
Those managing IT departments with VoIP systems should therefore do well to make sure that vulnerabilities are patched to minimize threats and mitigate possible effects on data and voice flow should there be attacks. For VoIP, both factors that must definitely be considered at length are:
Encryption
As voice calls may be easily intercepted and accessed by others other than the intended recipient using packet sniffer and other packet capturing techniques, it's required to encrypt the signal and voice packets on the sending end and decrypt them only once needed by the intended recipient.
Packets may be encrypted at the IP level so these are unintelligible to anyone who intercepts the VoIP traffic, utilising the IPSec encryption algorithms and security protocols. Encryption can also be done at application level with VoIPSec (VoIP using IPSec) that prevents man-in-the-middle attacks, packet sniffing and voice traffic analysis. Fortunately, obstacles in using IPSec or VoIPSec like slow crypto-engine that degrades Quality of Service (QoS) are now able to be overcome by new developments, such as for example VoIP-aware crypto scheduler that relieves the encryption bottlenecks.
Firewalls
Today's networks typically include firewalls that block intrusive, invasive or malicious traffic that tries to access a LAN, WAN or even only a single computer. It's the very first type of defense against attacks, with all traffic not meeting the firewall's requirements being blocked.
Firewalls are both blessing and curse for VoIP networks. Since a firewall filters all traffic, it causes a bottleneck that real-time applications like VoIP hate, as these cause latency (delay), jitter and packet loss that ultimately end in poor voice quality. But the choice to leaving some ports open allowing VoIP traffic to feed unfiltered would expose the device to possible attacks. On the other hand, VoIP networks may be configured to simplify and centralize security configurations at the firewall gateway instead of getting these at each endpoint, dramatically reducing the burden.
Using VoIP-aware Application Layer Gateway (ALG) that can parse and understand VoIP traffic signals and dynamically open or close needed ports is among the options that can be used to enable VoIP signals to traverse firewalls. Session Border Controller (SBC), a separate appliance that offers firewall/NAT traversal and other security features can also be used, although the latter is not even commonly available.
With the increasing popularity of VoIP, it's imperative for network designers and administrators to take advantage of all available technologies to overcome problems posed by the inclusion of VoIP to the information network to solve incompatibilities. Ensuring the protection of voice and data packets must also be provided with priority, as data loss or corruption can result in very serious consequences.
Comments