Keep your trunks in safe hands

Recently, there's been a lot written about unified communications that rely on session initiation protocol (SIP) trunks. SIP has emerged as a de facto protocol for establishing real-time communications, including voice-over IP (VoIP) calls.

It's true that SIP trunks can help your business reduce operational costs, and can offer you a lot of flexibility in terms of provisioning trunking capacity. But despite these benefits, there are some important things to think about before you jump into a SIP trunking deployment, and security is at the very top of the list.

Keeping security in mind will help you to avoid risk, and to will help you ensure a smooth deployment. Traditional trunking methods do not require the same level of security awareness, but when managing SIP trunks connected to a UC system - which essentially opens up to Internet / WAN - it is good to consider the following:

• There are many methods and options by which SIP trunks are deployed. These include SIP-aware firewalls and enterprise Session Border Controllers.
• Solutions differ in terms of flexibility. Some, because they are compatible with only one service provider, have the potential to limit your options just as much as they protect you.
• Solutions differ in terms of the control they leave your network administrator. So you might want to ask yourself who you would rather have the last word when it comes to your enterprise network security - your network administrator or your service provider?

It's worth taking a little time to think through these aspects of your deployment now in order to avoid getting hung up later on down the line.

Dale Tonogai is VP of Engineering at ShoreTel.