Virtually, every company seems to be in a rush to merge email, fax and voice communications. IT, BPO, media, telecom, banking and retail enterprises are embracing unified communications (UC) in a bid to increase productivity, improve customer satisfaction and reduce operational costs.
However, the risks associated with UC security are now beginning to surface as companies start merging their various channels of communications.
There?s no denying the fact that vulnerability from internal and external sources or knowledge workers who wish to exploit networks always exist. Eavesdropping, unauthorised access of messages, unauthorised handsets connecting to the network and disruption of phone network are some of the threats, faced by enterprises.
Minhaj Zia, national sales manager (unified communications), Cisco India & Saarc says, ?Some of the threats that UC faces are?open architecture on voice over internet protocol (VoIP) software can be exploited for eavesdropping, packet spoofing, and replay attacks; instant messaging, a highly vulne-rable service, has gained popularity not only on business desktops but also on handhelds and smartphones; access to emails via UC solutions carrying voice or mail attachments is also highly susceptible to attacks.?
As organisations expand in size, their integrated information and communication network also stretches. As a result, they need to unify security components from network, their endpoint tools and management tools into an integrated security system. According to Jayesh Kotak, vice-president, product management, D-Link India, denial of service, spoofing, eavesdropping, signaling and media manipulation are few security threats to the UC. ?Attacks are either to bring down a service or hijack a machine for malicious purposes. The application is a soft-target and there are variety of tools available on the internet to try out various kinds of attacks,? says Vivek Shenoy, chief technology officer, Elina Networks.
He adds, ?TCP/IP based communications has won over all other competing standards. Today, stopping attacks is a reasonably understood science and there are a host of technologies available for this. One of them is firewall.
Today?s firewalls understand IP protocols, so that filtering can be done at the protocol level. These are called application level gateways.?
It is seen that an integrated security system allows an enterprise to extend their information and communication network and increase their operational efficiency with greater effect.
?Most attacks are targeted towards the application. This is because a firewall/security device would be heavily tested against vulnerabilities. As it would be difficult for an attacker to breach these devices, the application provider concentrates more on user-level features than on security. These products would also not go through the same amount of rigour in terms of testing for security,? says Shenoy.
Several UC solutions are available in the market to maintain the low risks of breach of UC security. Some of these include IP PBX solutions from Cisco.
D-Link offers UC components like unified messaging, audio conferencing and video telephony.
Some of the technological tools used to manage UC security include VLANs to separate voice and data traffic, strong authentication and encryption, secure Wi-Fi access points, voice-aware firewalls, etc. Cisco offers a comprehensive systems approach to UC security by protecting all levels of UC system?infrastructure, call management, endpoints, and applications. Some areas of UC like both audio and video conferencing, IP telephony, instant messaging and unified messaging are growing fast. UC is a high interest area but actual deployments are low.
In addition, the UC market is rising high, as the cost of setting up an infrastructure for an organisation is high and the prices of commercial real estate are going up.
Aniket Dongre, analyst, IDC India, says that the Indian UC market was estimated at around $400 million in 2007 with an expected growth rate of 25% for the next five years (2008-2012). The worldwide unified components market would grow from $17.4 billion in 2007 to $24.6 billion by 2012.