Vendors Offers IP-Telephony Security Services

As more businesses large and small begin to deploy IP telephone technology, there's a growing need to provide better security as voice calls travel over data networks like E-mail. Two major telecom vendors -- Enterasys Networks and Lucent Technologies -- on Wednesday introduced a package of services designed to improve the security of IP telephony services.

Enterasys will resell Lucent's suite of Bell Labs-developed security assessment and consulting services, and VoIP readiness assessment. The two vendors also will offer voice-over-IP consulting services.

The services will analyze the ROI of security investments, provide a snapshot of how security policies are being implemented and how they can be improved, test a network's ability to fend off attacks, set up a security event-management system, assess the ability of a network to handle the added traffic generated by voice calls, and suggest modifications to better prepare the network.

IP telephony is becoming a target for hackers and distributors of malicious software, partly because businesses are doing a better job of securing their data networks. "VoIP security is brand new, but customers who want IP telephony should implement it with their eyes wide open," says Jon Oltsik, an analyst at The Enterprise Strategy Group Inc. "This Enterasys/Lucent service could help them."

The first products to be certified under the vendors' Secure Networks program are Lucent's voice over IP products, which provide IP telephony services as a hosted service or using equipment at a customer's location.