Recently, we wrote about PGP for VoIP, and how developers are integrating such security systems into Asterisk. But here’s one fundamental question: how secure is your VoIP system? are you aware of any vulnerabilities you might face through the course of your setup, use, and maintenance of your system?

Remember that your VoIP network is only as secure as the rest of your network. It’s not like plain old telephone systems, where people would need to physically access the circuit (whether from within your office, the interconnection to your local exchange carrier, or within the phone company itself). There are various risks involved, and these usually come in the form of fraud and theft (such as theft of information due to eavesdropping), and spam via VoIP. After all, valuable information is usually exchanged through voice communications (including financial information, medical advice, stock trading, and so forth), and these can be easily intercepted by third parties without adequate security.

Enterprise-oriented solutions are usually more secure than end-user solutions. This means that commercial-grade systems usually come built-in with encryption and risk-detection mechanisms. Still, it pays to double-check with your service or hardware provider just to be sure.

For instance, here are five fundamental things that IT managers should look out for.

• First is protecting the actual voice stream from eavesdropping.
• Second, is ensuring that the message gets from point A to point B without being modified en route.
• Third, you should make sure that Web interfaces and APIs that monitor traffic are secure and authenticated.
• Fourth, you should monitor the interconnection with the regular telephone lines (POTS), to make sure these are free of toll fraud.
• Fifth, you should secure the underlying TCP/IP network against attacks itself. One good way to be easily detect attacks on the VoIP network itself is to have separate LANs for voice and data. If your network is being attacked or is experiencing severely heavy loads (such as from DDOS attacks), then voice quality severely degrades.

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