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« AT&T Announces SoftPhone To Customers | Main | Prepping for the Internet Telephony Expo »

News In Review for 9/20/06

Some stories in the news worth noting. There were a lot of stories I felt were rehashes of old news and just not newsorthy in the past couple of days.

Interop Reporter’s Notebook: VoIP security still spotty
Observations from our reporters at Interop New York. Check back for updates through the week.
By Network World staff, Network World, 09/20/06

A frank assessment of the state of VoIP and security technologies came from Gregory Lebovitz, technical director and solutions architect at Juniper Networks, at an Interop session on Tuesday.

“No [intrusion-prevention system] or firewall vendor supports all VoIP protocols and technologies," said Lebovitz, whose company’s products claim to offer a measure of security for VoIP nets. “If [security vendors] are telling you that they support all VoIP technologies they’re lying. There just isn’t anyone who supports everything today."

Interesting, and brutally honest quote from Greg Lebovitz. No vendor sells the magic silver bullet. This really reinforces the need for a layered security architecture.



Comcast Has A Million VoIP Customers
Aswath isn’t going to be thrilled with the headline, but I am still calling it VoIP. Cable giant, thanks to some aggressive marketing and bundling has managed to chalk up a million digital voice (VoIP) customers. The growth has been so good that the company is adding 4000 jobs. Yet another proof of CableCos continuing success with voice and triple play offerings.
Other Story at Comcast: One Million VoIP Customers

I danced around Comcast and the CableCos a bit the other day when talknig about Vonage's woes.



Debitel Launches VOIP

SOPHIA ANTIPOLIS, France -- Centile , the leading global Application Software vendor for VoIP, fixed-mobile and multimedia networks today announced that Debitel, one of the largest service providers in Denmark , has chosen Centile’s IntraSwitch platform to deliver Hosted Enterprise and Residential VoIP services to the Danish market.

Centile’s IntraSwitch is a scalable and reliable SIP based carrier-grade VoIP Telephony service platform, designed to adapt easily to customer needs and grow with them. It provides the scalability, reliability and manageability to support hundreds of thousands of enterprise and residential customers in a highly available, distributed, and scaleable architecture.

I think this is probably a larger story than meets the eye, Could lead to some broadening advances in Europe that those of us in the States don't fully appreciate.



Experts: VoIP Represents Serious Security Risk

Banks and other companies switching their phone systems to voice over IP (VoIP) are making themselves vulnerable to phishing attacks for which there are currently no effective detection or prevention tools, a security researcher warned Wednesday.

"People will be able to penetrate bank networks and hijack their phone lines," said an independent security researcher, known by his pseudonym The Grugq, in an interview. VoIP is becoming increasingly common as companies and operators look to the technology to help cut costs, which makes them more vulnerable to attack, he said.

Other Stories
VoIP Presents Major Security Risk, Experts Say
HITB - VOIP presents major security risk, expert warns
VOIP presents major security risk, expert warns

While I'll agree that The Grugg is a well know expert in VoIP security, let's keep in mind that his presentation was also to unveil his product for sale. And he's one expert, not "experts" as the headline says. I suspect he wasn't taken entirely in context and this looks like shoddy reporting trying to capture a headline myself.



Building VOIP into the enterprise Voice over IP is slowly but surely making strides at organizations far and wide. According to Infonetics Research, 36 percent of large organizations were already using VOIP products and services in 2005. And a few are embracing the full promise of VOIP, which is the creative integration of voice and data in ways that change the way people work.

There is no killer VOIP application that spans all markets, but there are select environments in which the integration of voice and data are solving real-world problems. Here's how four very different organizations are using VOIP to address an array of business challenges, transforming their operations in the process.


There's a really accurate point made in that snip - There is no killer VOIP application that spans all markets, but there are select environments in which the integration of voice and data are solving real-world problems.

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Just to point out, I am not selling any products as I have none for sale.

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Ken Camp's Bio:

Ken Camp has more than 25 years of experience in information technology. Ken spent 17 years with AT&T and Lucent Technologies successfully designing and implementing voice and data networks. He later worked in the security marketplace and played a key role in early IPSec VPN deployments. As an independent consultant, Ken's primary focal areas include network performance improvement, security practices and the design and deployment of integrated voice and data solutions. He may be contacted at: ken_camp@realtimepublishers.net

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