Bad actors are constantly looking for the easiest path into corporate networks. While security breaches attributable to SIP may not yet be as widespread (or public) as some high-profile data attacks, that is changing as SIP-based unified communications (UC) adoption grows. Hackers prey on vulnerabilities created with UC implementations. Unfortunately, it is often a lack of understanding of the risks, and subsequent lack of best practices to address potential attack vectors for UC, that will create opportunities for malicious events to occur.

Without proper security on unified communications, an enterprise will only have reactive after-the-fact options when serious threats strike. And this can occur regardless of your UC implementation - appliance or cloud-based. Not only can hackers cause financial loss by accessing corporate data and accounts through a SIP breach, but some would not hesitate to use the same breach to launch other malicious attacks for toll fraud, Denial of Service (DoS) to disrupt operations and demand payment to stop, identity and financial theft, corporate espionage or supporting political agendas. This makes SIP more of a means to an end.

Ribbon provides a new level of security and operational analytics for unified communications. Leveraging well-established concepts of network behavioral analytics from the data world, Ribbon provides analytics and insights for service security and network operations. By establishing a well-defined baseline of what is categorized as “normal” voice and video sessions as well as IP port activity, deviations from this baseline can be quickly identified and mitigated. With access to network data (KPIs and service metrics) and call detail records, it will be possible to get an end-to-end view for network operations, network-wide troubleshooting and alerts on negative service impacts.