Introduction

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has been popular in the telecommunications world since its emergence in the late 90s, as a new technology transporting multimedia over the IP network. In this book, the multimedia (or rich media) includes not only voice, but also video, instant message, presence data, and fax data over the IP network.

Today people commonly make phone calls with IP phones or client software (such as Skype or iChat) on their computer, or send instant messages to their friends. This gives them convenience and cost savings. Many telecommunications companies and other organizations have been switching their legacy phone infrastructure to a VoIP network, which reduces costs for lines, equipment, manpower, and maintenance.

However, the benefits of VoIP are not free. There are disadvantages to using VoIP. The integrated rich media makes it difficult to design the network architecture. Multiple VoIP protocols and different methods of implementation create serious interoperability issues. Integration with existing data networks creates quality of service issues. The fact that so many network elements are involved through open (or public) networks creates serious security issues, because each element and network has vulnerable factors.

The security issues especially are becoming more serious because traditional security devices (such as firewalls) and protocols (such as encryption) cannot protect VoIP services or networks from recent intelligent threats.

This book focuses on the important topic of VoIP security by analyzing current and potential threats to demonstrating the methods of prevention.