In Depth

VoIP Security: When Voice Becomes Data

With voice over IP picking up speed, CSOs face the challenge of navigating an entirely new security threat landscape for the phone system

By Scott Berinato

an issue if companies and individuals thought about the full threat landscape and the costs and risks

associated with that, instead of getting sucked in by the pure per-minute cost savings and neat

applications VoIP offers. "If security says you can't do something, people just go around it," he says.

"Users are going to do what they're going to do, so we have to secure what they do. It's gonna happen.

You can't stop the flood of technology."

That might be true, but you could hope to contain it. After all, Sweden didn't just let people switch

to Högertrafik whenever and wherever it suited them. Imagine if it had. In fact, the one thing that

has prevented the new voice services from really flying out of control is the PSTN. In many cases the old

copper that remains in the first mile of phone connections has at least slowed the proliferation of VoIP,

both its great potential and its great threat.

If you're focused on VoIP's potential, then POTS is the last obstacle before a voice communications

revolution. If you're focused on the threat, then the century-old analog technology has become, of all

things, a security control.

Reach Senior Editor Scott Berinato at sberinato@cxo.com

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