Should we still be talking about “VoIP security”? Or should we be using some other language?

Back when we started VOIPSA in 2005, “voice over IP (VoIP)” was the term we all were using, but as we look at what kind of activities come next, we’re starting to wonder if we should be talking about “communications security” a bit differently.

For starters, in the past 8 years we’ve moved far beyond simply “voice” into video over IP, text messaging over IP, data sharing over IP… all within a single communications session. Is that still “VoIP”?

Beyond that, we’ve seen a range of other terms coming into usage, including:

• unified communications (UC)
• real-time communications (RTC)
• cloud communications
• IP communications

and many more. Plus new technologies are out that have pushed “VoIP” beyond its traditional proprietary protocols and the open standard of the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). We’ve seen the strong emergence of XMPP (Jabber) and its related “Jingle” protocol. We’ve seen the explosion of interest in the WebRTC / RTCWEB protocols and tools.

Are all of those “VoIP”? Or are they something more?

Should we be talking about…

• UC security?
• real-time communications security?
• IP communications security?

Or perhaps just plain old “communications security”? (or is that too generic?) I’ve seen some people talking about “SIP security”, but now that is specific to a single protocol.

Or is “VoIP security” still an okay term to use?

What do you think? What do you use? What do you hear vendors and others using? How should we be talking about securing all these many ways we have to communicate now over IP networks?

Please do let us know either as comments here or out on social networks. (Thanks!)