There are a lot of concerns to address for executive security officers today, from increasingly worrisome Denial of Service DoS attacks to influxes of zero-day vulnerabilities. It's fair to say that securing UC communications isn't something that's on the top of their list.
Traditionally, security for enterprises has focused on data. There's a huge criminal community dedicated to the goal of stealing data or encrypting it and holding it to ransom. That's why enterprises spend billions of dollars a year protecting their data with security devices and firewalls. Enterprises have begun to close down data doors, but maybe they've left a window open.
UC applications like video, voice, messaging, and file sharing are transmitted through the same IP as data applications, and prone to the same attacks. Where UC applications differ, is that they're real-time applications using SIP to signal between endpoints and stacks.
What's the Danger with UC?
Problems with UC security expand on an enterprise's level of risk by introducing theft of service, voice phishing, DoS, and Telephony Denial of Service attacks. Even next-generation data firewalls aren't adequately built to protect SIP-based real-time solutions, and this is a serious concern. IBM's Security Intelligence group have only recently revealed that cyber-attacks using VoIP grew in 2016, accounting for over 51% of the security issues analysed in that year.
Simply put, SIP protection requires the use of a Session Border Controller (SBC). As many enterprises adapt zero-trust models in security, every application needs to be monitored, and SBCs can play important roles in enterprise communication by offering signalling interworking, intelligent routing, and media services to boost experience quality.
However, the primary function of SBCs is to protect the UC network from SIP attacks. With security features like protocol filtering, per-session awareness, encryption, and dynamic blacklisting, SBCs can prevent telephony-based attacks. Many enterprises today use SBCs as a UC firewall, and a tool to encrypt their assets. These premise-based solutions are intended to secure applications in the enterprise, but what happens when UC enters the cloud?
Moving into the Cloud
Statistics reveal that the number of VoIP and UC subscribers in the cloud will double in the next few years, to reach 75 million by 2020. The cloud, therefore, represents a much larger space, vulnerable to attack. Cloud-based services are made up of a range of VMs (virtual machines), and dozens of different microservices, each of which is equipped with its own API.
