VoIP (Voice Over IP) Security

From Computing and Software Wiki

VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is a protocol used for the transmission of voice data across the Internet. IP telephony treats voice as another form of data that is compressed and optimized for network traffic and is vulnerable to attacks traditional data would be on the network. VoIP security is akin to network security; voice data traveling the network will look like any other normal data.

Corporations generally place VoIP concerns on the voice quality, latency, and quality of service above the overall security when VoIP telephony is actually more vulnerable to certain attacks compared to the traditional phone system. The most common threats found in the VoIP environment include eavesdropping, theft of services, and denial of service attacks. Has VoIP come far enough so that the benefits outweigh the costs to justify its use?

Contents 1 Introduction 2 Attacks 2.1 Eavesdropping 2.2 Theft of Services 2.3 Denial of Services 3 Recommendations 4 References 5 See Also 6 External Links

Introduction

VoIP has the immediate benefits of reduced costs of operations to corporations with the dual use of the existing data networks already in place for voice and data packets contrast to the more expensive alternative of a separate traditional phone line network from the data network.

Attacks

There are three main types of attacks that the VoIP environment are susceptible to including eavesdropping, theft of services, and denial of service attacks.

Eavesdropping

Theft of Services

Denial of Services

Recommendations

Although a network cannot be completely immune to attack, here are some recommendations to secure your VoIP network.

1. Do not user shared media devices (ie hubs) on networks
2. All VoIP traffic should be encrypted
3. VoIP servers with confidential information should be treated as a confidential database
4. Build redundancy into VoIP network.
5. Make sure firewall is VoIP aware

References

See Also

External Links