Securing your SIP – it’s easier than you think

Security is always a hot topic when it comes to a company’s infrastructure and systems, particularly when customer data is concerned. With the rise of internet-based services, we are seeing an upsurge in the number of businesses in the UK, and indeed, around the world, moving to IP based telephony. This represents an opportunity for companies to streamline their costs and make their business more flexible and more efficient. Yet, the usual security measures need to be considered if organisations want to ensure their calls, and their company data, are protected.

As consumers, we interact with a large number of companies via the phone – banks, utilities providers, insurance companies, to name a few – often sharing sensitive information with them, including our bank account details. It is important for us to know that those details aren’t being compromised in any way that could result in the loss of money or attempts to steal our identity. It is equally important for the companies we deal with as well – any damage to their reputation or loss of competitive advantage could have a hugely negative impact in the long-term. Despite this, there are no formal industry regulations for protecting IP calls, not even within the banking industry.

However, whilst security is an issue that any company either already using a SIP trunking service, or one that is thinking about deploying one, should be considering. It is no more than the usual security measures a company would use to protect its data. The easiest way to protect your IP calls from being hacked is to encrypt the call – this is something that should be available from your SIP trunking service provider.

Not many providers offer encryption as part of their service, but here at Colt we pride ourselves on offering one of the most comprehensive solutions on the market. We therefore offer encryption as an additional feature within our SIP Trunking solution. VoIP Access provides both SIP signalling and audio media encryption. Encrypting the signalling through SIP TLS (Transport Layer Security) can be done on its own or by additionally securing audio with SRTP (Secure Real-Time Protocol) media encryption, which further increases the level of security. In addition, we can also encrypt an Internet back-up connection, meaning that if a business ever needs to fail over during a fault then it can rest assured that calls continue to be secure and beyond the reach of hackers.

As is often the case with security, many see it as an afterthought and it only becomes relevant when there is a security breach. But by then it is too late – if you look to embed security into your IP Telephony system from the beginning it is much simpler and, of course, much safer.