[VOIPSEC] PATENTED IRONPIPE? SYSTEM TAKES RISK OUT OF VoIP

[J. Oquendo]

On Wed, 07 Jan 2009, Jacqueline Herships wrote:

> PATENTED IRONPIPE? SYSTEM TAKES RISK OUT OF VoIP,
> 
> ENABLES SECURE MULTIMEDIA TELEPHONY
> 
> NJ-based Emerson Development has creted plans for a new  
> telecommunications security system, dubbed IronPipe (tm), which  
> integrates the Public Switched Telephone Network with the Internet,  
> overcoming risks to Voice Over IP from spying / espionage, hacking,  
> intrusion, and interruption - while enabling a wealth of new  
> MultiMedia features which will assist in streamlining and enhancing  
> secure communications.

Hooray for marketing. Happy new year all. So re-wording this...
A company is intergrating PSTN to the Internet. Sounds like VoIP
to me - digital telephone if I worked at a cable provider. But,
it overcomes the risk of spying, espionage and hacking... And
IPSEC doesn't?

For those interested, I work at a VoIP carrier (those who know, know).
As an engineer, I have to dabble with all sorts of funky configurations,
equipment, networks, etc., not to mention I also manage a couple of
hundred PBX's ranging from Fonality, PBXnSIP, Asterisk, Avaya, CCM,
CME, Nortel and the list goes on and on. Anyhow, one of my main
concerns is availability - network goes down - no VoIP obvsious to
us on this list, not-so-obvious to the lay person who just wants their
phone to work.

During the past two years, we've been fiddling with high availability
firewalls (Stonegates). Two carriers, one firewall @ the client's end
one on ours... Connection goes down, client doesn't even notice. Calls
stay put with about a split second gap of "emptiness". No worse than
most cellulars. I'm able to offer the same exact thing without the
overhead of patents! Imagine that!.

There really isn't much to "securing" VoIP, it's just another protocol
no different than SMTP, HTTP, POP, etc., layered security goes a long
way: Port-security on your switches, tunnels here, VLAN's there, ACL's
here, ACL's there and voila - you too can have uber C2 mimicking
security - sometimes using your existing infrastructure.


> If anyone is interested in further information, we can provide you  
> with our press release announcing our most recent patent and a White  
> Paper describing IronPipe (tm) in detail.  We also have an online  
> presentation which presents an overview.  Patent summaries are  
> available upon request.

If anyone is interested on how to properly secure VoIP based telephony
I suggest picking up books on "network security": Cisco Press' Network
Security Architectures is a good start even if you're not a Cisco shop.
Learn the fundamentals of networking and security as a whole and guess
what - you won't have to worry about security over VoIP because at the
end of the day, it's no different than securing SMTP, HTTP. "The ports
have been changed to protect the identity" (cheesy spoof on those law
enforcement shows).

If one still needs clarity, contact me off-list and we can go on for
days dealing with this topic outside the marketing level. Otherwise
press releases should be sent to a press agency, not a mailing list
for those looking to speak at the protocol slash engineering level.




=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
J. Oquendo
SGFA, SGFE, C|EH, CNDA, CHFI, OSCP

"Enough research will tend to support your
conclusions." - Arthur Bloch

"A conclusion is the place where you got
tired of thinking" - Arthur Bloch

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