Police 21st Century Security Problem for Police Authorities.
The complete story of how to deliver a new wave of security for voice/video software, that we deploy alongside productivity tools in every 21 st century business communications today. Fraud and eavesdropping attacks are now as likely as viruses were 2 decades ago and to disrupt our policing with little or no protection from the Telecom providers. Problem statement While mobile devices are widely used within all police forces, their use poses 3 significant issues, including problems associated with integrating different Unified Communications offerings (UC). Security Mobile phones and the networks, to which they connect, do not provide the level of security needed to allow their use for operational communications. Convenience Police officers in common with employees in other organisations like the convenience of using mobile phones and tend to prefer their personal phones to officially issued devices. The reason for this preference is that personal contracts tend to deliver new handset models more quickly than corporate contracts. Officers also prefer the convenience of carrying a single phone to juggling multiple devices. Police forces are not alone in facing this trend. Forrester Research reported that nearly 60% of companies allow employees to use personal devices for work and provide IT support for some or all of these devices. A Wall Street Journal report places the figure at 87% and notes that this causing a headache for IT departments. When the security problems of mobile networks are added to the IT support headaches, trying to control the use of personal mobile devices is a serious problem for all police forces. Recognising that controlling personal mobile device use is at best very difficult, a better approach would be to find a solution to the security and IT support issues.
Budgetary Pressures Providing mobile phones for police offices and servicing the contracts on those phones places significant pressure on police budgets. As all public sector organisations are facing budgetary pressure, measures that can reduce costs while maintaining or improving service levels will be welcome. Solution and the overlay of Unified Communications (UC) in the Police. UM Labs is able to address these problems with a service based offering, Security Software as a Service (SSaaS). This service is responsible for handling security functions which include signalling and media encryption for the back-end systems. Calls made via the service are decrypted and forwarded to a UC acting as an IP-PBX. The IP-PBX is responsible for routing calls between handsets, for providing a voice mail service for handsets that are not currently reachable and for implementing other functions including text messaging and conferencing with secure video if necessary. The UC
processes clear-text audio/video streams, and so must be contained within secure perimeter with all connections to external services calls routed via the SSaaS. The UM-Labs SSaaS can also support secure connections to desk phones and connections to external systems including the police internal phone system and SIP trunk services to provide PSTN access. Most external connections will be made in clear-text as the external networks such as the PSTN do not offer encryption. UM-Labs Innovation in Security enables its customers to fully activate their entire business communications channel, ensuring secure voice infrastructure for all of a company s activities, including sensitive information that must be kept confidential, customer service info, marketing data and intellectual property. All this is going towards providing an improved risk management policy and a better return on investment. 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 for Bring Your Own Device s Secure Networking and Community Building with no Eavesdropping Secure Virtual Business applications for Unified Communications UM-Labs Innovation in Security showcase is the world s first Authentication and Encryption solution, 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 Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) unified communications.
There are many Unified Communication (UC) products that provide a full interactive solution for the Enterprise; in most cases solutions like Microsoft Lync, IBM SameTime, Avaya, and Cisco-Jabber are based on Internet Standards and key to all these is the Session Internet Protocol (SIP), this allows instant communication using the Internet. When connected, collaboration is easy, but is it secure and can it be disrupted? The straight answer is NO to secure and YES it can be disrupted. The Internet and IP networks are about ease of use and saving money; return on investment (ROI) in Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) services will help the technology budget stretch further and help growth of new corporate IT services. These benefits will be lost without properly implemented security controls, so when the potential for loss of company intellectual property or other sensitive information is a real possibility and the cost of those can exceed both the cost savings, it is wise to make a small investment to keep the ROI in balance.
Recognise existing investment in Communications All conversations using voice become important to how your business looks and are perceived by customers, partners and employees, who may be across different regions, divisions or global offices. Many organisations are deploying UC to provide an internal IP-PBX connecting both hardware IP phones and softphones. In most cases these deployments will coexist with an existing IP-PBX or need to interconnect with an IP PBX in another location. Secure connectivity requirements may make this difficult. The UM Labs Innovation in Security provides a range of flexible options for interconnecting UC with other SIP based networks and systems. The flexibility of the UM Labs Innovation in Security Showcase allows UC to connect to any existing SIP capable IP-PBX, to also accept VoIP calls from any recognised mobile device.
UM-Labs Benefit Summary for Police Forces The benefits of UM-Labs SSaaS are not limited to enabling secure communication over insecure networks. UM-Labs can also provide a number of operational benefits and deliver cost savings. A description of each potential benefit follows. This list was constructed based on discussions with the UK Police Authority and with information gained from sources with relevant experience in other police forces. Secure communications The primary purpose of the SSaaS is to provide secure Voice, Video and Text communication for mobile devices over an insecure network. SSaaS operates on cellular networks and on WiFi hot-spots providing Internet access. The SSaaS will also operate over 4G networks as they become available. The service operates on a wide range of consumer grade handsets which enables those handsets to be used when sensitive data is exchanged using voice, Video and text communication. Device security SSaaS includes local data encryption, malware protection and jail-break detection. These features enable the safe use of personal handset within the UM-Labs service. Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) The communication and device security controls mean that VOIP/Video clients available in the open market, such as Lync, RIM and Counter Path can be installed on an officer s own phone. The SSaaS will provide a Voice/Video Authentication Mechanism Using Subscriber Identity Module (smartcard) that securely authenticates the device running a VoIP/Video/UC application using authentication credentials stored within the Smartcard or Arm Trusted Zone processor, now referred to as the secure element. This has an immediate and direct financial benefit as it means that the Police no longer need to provide mobile phones for those officers using their own phones.
Allowing a wider range of phones Client applications such as Lync, Counter Path, and RIM run on smartphones and tablets. This fits well with the bring-your-own-device philosophy because personal contracts then to provide faster handset updates and tend to delivery newer devices sooner than corporate contracts. This has the benefit of allowing officer to use preferred devices, although there will need to be some controls to ensure that only those devices that support a version of the industry clients mentioned and any that use SIP for protocol access with the appropriate level of security certification are used. Reducing the number of phones carried By allowing offices to make use of their own phone, the number of devices that need to be carried is reduced. While this is largely an end-user benefit, there is some operational benefit as the chances of using the wrong phone are reduced. Separating personal and official calls SSaaS exclusively uses the phones data channel, either through the GSM network or via a suitable hot-spot. This means that when the SSaaS is running in a personal phone, all official calls will be covered by the monthly data allowance. The SSaaS data usage is low, for example keeping it running for 24 hours a day for a full month and making 2 hours of official calls per day for 30 days (total 60 hours of calls) will generate an estimated 180 Mbytes of data traffic. While the Police may wish to pay officers a monthly allowance for the use of part of their data allowance, this payment can be low. As an example, Vodafone s Business Essentials plan offers 500 minutes, 3000 landline minutes and 500 Mbytes of mobile internet for 25 per
month. Based on the above assumptions, the SSaaS would use 36% of the monthly data allowance and none of the minute allowance. Based on this a monthly allowance of 5 to cover data usage on personal phones would be reasonable. Paying a fixed monthly allowance to cover official use of personal phones and ensuring separation of personal and official calls removes the need for officers to identify official calls in their monthly bills, to submit a claim for those calls and for the accounts department to verify those claims. This simpler procedure will save time for both front-line officers and administrative staff. Persona Management and BYOD We need to get a balance and that is the reclassification of Persona Management, take back control, but the IT heads must employ this advance technology and in this should expect that their SIP fire walls to achieve the security for BYOD is assured. Authentication ability for these devices are set above the UC solution in and around the authorities, it enables personal protection against fraudulent entry.
The Smartcard is network operated, either as part of a wireless carrier or Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) running over a wireless carrier network. We are seeing the catch up begin, the device secure element in the smartcard, either phone or tablet has finally allowed UM-labs to connect directly (patented), writing through a secure algorithm in the Smart Card to authenticate the owner. Using this highly secure method, it authenticates to the SSaaS activating individual authentication persona and not representing a tag for fraud capture. This provides Secure SIP VOIP, Video, BYOD, UC and IM log in, which will be inter-operable to the UC product or other services and at a realistic cost for the police authorities. UM-Labs UM Labs is a pioneer and leader in Voice over IP/SIP Video/BYOD and Unified Communications security. The company markets a family of cost effective SIP Security Controllers 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 either as appliance or SSaaS/PaaS white label service.
Confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity of voice communications over the internet (VoIP/Video) are critical considerations for most businesses. Driven by lower bandwidth costs and the promise of increased flexibility, VoIP 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. To solve these problems, UM Labs has developed a family of cost effective SIP Security Controllers which can be easily delivered as a service via the PaaS Toolkit or plugged into existing networks to enable SIP connectivity, security and voice encryption. 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.