Fact Sheet. N-fon Case Study
nfon AG, a service provider based in Munich, Germany is successfully providing hosted PBX services for the corporate market. These services offer an attractive option for organisations of all sizes. Increasingly nfon s users are demanding encryption on the links between desktop and any VoIP client and their virtual PBX at nfon s hosting cloud centre. nfon turned to UM Labs to solve this problem. Problem statement nfon AG is a successful ITSP cloud provider for hosted PBX services to the corporate market in Germany and in other European countries. The company s value lies in its ability to offer cost effective telephony services to its customer base. nfon takes complete responsibility for the delivery of both internal and external phone services which means that their users avoid both the capital costs of installing their own PBX and the overhead of managing that system. The hosted PBX option is particularly attractive for any geographically distributed organisation such as retail and the retail banking sector. nfon s infrastructure and close association with a number of the backbone Internet providers means that users can rely on high quality VoIP links from any location using DSL Interconnections. The low cost of these links is a key factor in controlling the overall service cost. A hosted PBX service provided by nfon handles all internal and external communications. This includes communication with customers and suppliers and interoffice calls. As these calls may run over the public Internet, many of nfon s customers and particularly those handling information which is subject to regulatory and privacy controls are demanding call encryption. Adding call encryption to its existing systems while maintaining their cost advantages proved a challenge for nfon.
Solution To solve this problem, nfon turned to UM Labs. The UM Labs SIP Security Software Platform as a Service provides standards based call encryption which allows nfon to offer this service to their customer base without the need to install additional equipment at the customer s premises. All a customer needs is a handset capable of supporting the same encryption standards. The UM Labs SIP Security Software Platform as a Service provides encryption for SIP signaling (call setup) and RTP media. SIP signaling is protected with TLS, while RTP is encrypted using Secure RTP (SRTP). In both cases the UM Labs SIP Security Software Platform as a Service uses strong encryption algorithms such as AES with key lengths of up to 256 bits for symmetric algorithms and 2048 for asymmetric algorithms. The actual algorithm and key length chosen for an individual call is dependent on the capability of the handset. nfon use Aastra and connect snom plus other industry handsets, both of which offer compatible encryption services.
nfon s back-end provisioning service means that call encryption can quickly be enabled at the customer s request. The UM Labs platform installed at the nfon hosting cloud centre will automatically set up encryption for all calls between the customer s handsets and the hosted PBX. This means that if the user s handsets are capable of supporting encryption, encrypted calls can be enabled as required without visiting the customer s premises. Once the service is enabled, users benefit from encryption on all calls made between office locations and on all calls routed via nfon s PSTN gateway. To ensure service continuity, nfon have installed a redundant cluster in their cloud at their data centre. This cluster will scale to handle many thousands of calls. Solution Benefits By selecting UM Labs SIP Security Software Platform as a Service, nfon are able to meet their customer s demands for call encryption and to provide that service as a cost effective option for their customer base. The design of the SIP Security Software Platform as a Service means that this value added offering can be enabled quickly and efficiently with no requirement for additional equipment or configuration changes on the customer s network. This service gives nfon a competitive edge by enabling them to offer call encryption to customers that require this service for internal policy reasons or to meet regulatory requirements. nfon s customers benefit from being able to combine the flexibility and cost benefits of a hosted PBX service with the data protection and security provided by call encryption.
The UM-Labs Innovation in Security Showcase includes: Secure Communications at the touch of a button from the desk or mobile Simple connectivity to legacy phone systems Secure SIP Trunking for better ROI Secure Voice/video for Bring Your Own Device s Secure Networking and Community Building with no Eavesdropping Secure Virtual Business applications for Unified Communications Innovation in Security showcase is the world s first authentication and Encryption Security Platform as a Service (SPaaS) for UC, which brings together Persona Management and End to End encryption across an enterprise voice network, allowing 21 st century social business to be performed in safety, protected from corruption or eavesdropping.
The aims are to deliver a breakthrough environment that decreases risk, reduces costs and improves communication across the business, gaining improved ROI from the use of VOIP/Video/IM/BYOD in an Enterprise UC 21 st century environment.
About UM-Labs UM Labs is a pioneer and leader in Voice over IP/Video/BYOD/Persona Management and Unified Communications security. The company markets effective SIP Security Platform as a Service, which make connecting VoIP/Video systems to the public internet easy and secure. As a software generated solution this can be implemented on any Intel or Arm technology in a downloadable soft implementation or SPaaS service run from a private cloud or public cloud. Confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity of voice/video communications over the internet (VoIP/Video) are critical considerations for most businesses today. Driven by lower bandwidth costs and the promise of increased flexibility, VoIP/Video is quickly becoming a critical tool in the business-to-business landscape. Significant growth in SIP Trunking and consolidation of voice and data traffic over the public internet are raising new security and interoperability concerns that were previously overlooked. UM-Labs today works through our partners to deliver these innovative solutions and the Innovation in Security Showcase becomes their blue print to demonstrate the advancement of these solutions and allows them to fit directly into the Unified Communications value chain. Contact sales@um-labs.com the sales team will arrange a presentation and you can receive case studies at the same time.