Addressing Privacy Concerns with VoIP

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The amount and usage of data over the Internet are growing everyday. One type of data becoming increasingly popular is voice via phone calls. Voice over IP (VoIP) allows anyone with an Internet connection to make phone calls over the Internet.

As VoIP usage grows on the Internet, so do concerns about privacy. Sharing your data over the Internet exposes it to many risks, many of which are unknown to your business. Free accounts with Skype or Google Voice may seem attractive at first, but they don’t promise the same level of protection as paid services. Lost or compromised data cost you more than any cost and time savings that such cheaper options offer. Should you sacrifice for privacy, convenience, and cost?

And what about security? To take advantage of security measures that prevent malware, denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, spamming, snooping, spoofing, and identity theft, you need a VoIP solution that allows encryption, has a private server, and includes a privacy policy and SLA.

Encryption

Just as you would shop only on those e-commerce sites that use secure sockets layer to protect your customer data and transactions, so too should you expect your VoIP provider to make your calls private. Choose providers that use encryption to secure your calls. Encryption converts data into a form unreadable to everyone except the sender’s device and devices of the intended recipients.

Your VoIP provider should encrypt voice transmissions with some type of Transport-Layer Security (TLS). TLS produces secure channels that provide call privacy and data integrity. Because this type of communication relies on keys shared only between the devices of both calling parties, snooping, impersonation, and message tampering become difficult.

Whereas TLS bases its secrets on a per-call basis, Secure Real-Time Transport Protocol (SRTP) adds an extra layer of encryption within each voice, generating a unique key for each packet within a call’s voice stream. In addition to the benefits of TLS, SRTP prevents snoopers from replaying your call.

Private Server

If phone calls over the Internet still worry you, then open a business VoIP account with companies such as Vonage. Such accounts usually provide industry-standard security measures such as encryption.

However, if your business requires even more protection, then it can invest in a sandboxed environment such as a dedicated server. This server separates traffic of other customers and enables your business to apply its own unique security policies.

For example, with authentication, you can configure your VoIP server to accept calls only from certain phones or IP addresses. This feature limits VoIP usage to those who work with your company. You can even restrict calls by department, team, or employee. In essence, the server creates the VoIP equivalent of an intranet; it also shields your VoIP service from DoS attacks.

Authentication can go one step further by forcing all VoIP call parties to validate each other before the call begins. One such method is speaker recognition, which assures each party of the true positive of the other, even if both are using approved devices. This feature prevents impersonation.

Privacy Policy and SLA

Finally, read your service provider’s privacy policy SLA for any service guarantees or remedies in case of breaches. All the security measures in the world won’t do you any good if your service provider fails to honor them or shows no commitment to improve them over the long term. In addition, look at the call details the vendor logs and the other entities with whom it shares those details. Knowing data usage outside your company matters at least as much as data usage inside.