SIP Tips VoIP Into Secure ...

March 21, 2005 (Computerworld)

Kevin Fecher, CEO of OpenAir Technologies Inc.

... territory. Or so hope vendors hawking voice-over-IP products and services. Most suppliers of VoIP technology acknowledge the perception that it has security holes. But many feel that the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), currently winding its way through the Internet Engineering Task Force's standards process, can help put IT managers' minds at ease. Kevin Fecher, CEO of OpenAir Technologies Inc. in Reston, Va., said he thinks that VoIP's security problems "are overblown." But, he acknowledges, you need to plan and deploy your VoIP network very carefully to ensure that it's secure. Fecher, whose company installs VoIP systems for businesses, says the majority of his customers currently use the H323 protocol, which is far more complex to manage than SIP is. But SIP is gaining ground, he adds.

Thom O'Connor, a solutions architect at Stalker Software Inc.

SIP's virtues include simple administration and the ability to handle any media, says Thom O'Connor, a solutions architect at Stalker Software Inc., a messaging technology vendor in Mill Valley, Calif. "Once you establish a connection, you can do anything over it," he says, pointing to uses such as instant messaging, voice communications and e-mail. SIP also authenticates end users to ensure, for example, that callers or IMers are who they say they are. O'Connor says that with an IP infrastructure, a unified messaging strategy ("What we've all been talking about for 10 years") is finally possible.
John Todd, chief technology officer at VoIP Inc. in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., argues that VoIP is already secure and that there's no threat of someone tapping into your IP phone network. But, he concedes, vendors "are all worried about interception" of calls at an Internet service provider's network hub. That's the only place where calls can be snooped, he says.
Partisan election tool becomes ...
... independent marketing product. The technology that was behind the Democratic Party's record $185 million fundraising effort during last year's political campaign is leaving the donkey's tent for a broader audience. According to Juan Proano, president of New York-based Plus Three LP, his company's Arcos 4.0 integrated stack of open-source Web, database and messaging technologies will become available this week to more than liberal politicians. Arcos includes tools to conduct and manage massive e-mail campaigns, and Proano says the new release improves workflow processes and boosts performance to handle spikes in Web traffic. The software is free, of course -- but Plus Three charges between $150,000 and $300,000 for setup and customization. Acknowledging that his side lost last fall's presidential election, Proano nonetheless defends Arcos. "We like to think that the technology held us close," he says. Proano expects the primary users of the software will be nonprofit organizations, but he says companies with large-scale e-mail needs can also benefit. He adds that Plus Three might consider selling its services to Republicans "on a case-by-case basis."
Stop political (and other) spam ...
... from reaching your end users. Dan Wallace, vice president of marketing at DigiPortal Software Inc. in Sanford, Fla., says his company's release of ChoiceMail Enterprise 3.0 next week "offers an end to the spam arms race." New features include global policies that can override the antispam rules of end users. You can also use ChoiceMail's administration console to block the IP addresses of spammers instead of doing that at your firewall -- which is trickier to pull off, Wallace claims. The software costs $65 per user.
Meanwhile, Postini Inc. has taken pity on small and midsize businesses that are deluged with spam. Redwood City, Calif.-based Postini now offers its antispam service to companies with modest internal IT support. According to Andrew Lochart, director of product marketing, Postini Small Business Edition simplifies the battle against spam. For example, he says, the configuration process for Postini's Enterprise Edition takes 15 steps, whereas the new release requires just two. It starts at $25 per user annually and is available today.

Des Cahill, CEO of Habeas Inc.

Des Cahill, CEO of Habeas Inc. in Mountain View, Calif., suggests that we need to rethink our spam defenses. "The war on spam as we've been fighting it isn't working," he says. Habeas' goal is to make message senders prove themselves as legitimate e-mailers. Habeas establishes an accreditation and reputation score for senders. Its namesake technology creates profiles of senders' practices that can be detected by antispam tools, such as the open-source SpamAssassin 3.1 software due out next month. "We're building the ?berwhitelist for the Internet -- a trust network for e-mail," Cahill says.