Sonus Networks, Inc. (Nasdaq: SONS), a global leader in securing cloud and real-time communications, this week announced an initiative that will combine the capabilities of Sonus Session Border Controllers (SBCs) and industry leading next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) to provide a truly unified security perimeter for enterprises. The new solution addresses the growing need for enterprises to secure both IP-based data and SIP-based real-time communications in a cohesive, consistent manner as they migrate to Unified Communications (UC).
- Sonus introduces an initiative to bolster enterprise communications security.
- Unique solution combines the complementary strengths of Sonus SBCs and industry leading NGFWs to deliver stronger, seamless security for IP data and real-time communications traffic.
- The solution is designed to reduce the SIP security attack surface by unifying the data and UC security perimeters and facilitate automated and real-time adaptive security provisioning across the enterprise.
Under the current UC security perimeter arrangement, firewalls and SBCs work independently to address data and real-time communications traffic, respectively. This deployment creates natural holes in the enterprise security perimeter that can be exploited during an attack.
“The efforts by two of our VNF providers, Sonus Networks and Palo Alto Networks, to support cross VNF service chains is exactly the type of intelligent collaboration we had envisioned when we launched Verizon Virtual Network Services,” said Shawn Hakl, vice president, Business Networking and Security Solutions, Verizon.
In the new unified security perimeter, NGFWs and Sonus SBCs work together by exchanging security context to leverage their strengths and fill these security holes. Sonus SBCs deep understanding of SIP session characteristics can now enable NGFWs to take part in mitigating telephony denial-of-service (TDoS) attacks and theft-of-service attacks that might have been missed. Similarly, the NGFWs payload scanning ability can help the SBCs blacklist bad actors sending spyware or other malware. By linking the NGFW and SBC platforms at the control-plane level, the unified security perimeter provides a holistic network defense system that makes real-time threat detection and mitigation a reality in both hardware and cloud architectures. This capability becomes increasingly important as enterprises move to cloud or software-defined network (SDN) architectures, where the network perimeter may now be logical rather than physical.
“Enterprises are seeing a rise in UC attacks, many of them designed to shut down contact centres or steal mission critical company data,” said Mykola Konrad, vice president, Product Management and Marketing, Sonus
