Voice Over IP Security Alliance

What Does Voice Over IP Security Alliance Mean?

VoIP Over IP Security Alliance (VOIPSA) is a cross-industry coalition of individuals and organizations from the security and VoIP communications sectors that work to raise awareness and address current security threats to VoIP technology.

The Voice Over IP Security Alliance was founded in 2005 as an open, nonprofit, vendor-neutral organization whose mission is to promote the current state of VoIP security research, VoIP security education and awareness, and free VoIP testing methodologies and tools.

Techopedia Explains Voice Over IP Security Alliance

VOIPSA is an organization formed by a diverse group of security companies, researchers and software vendors aiming to raise awareness about VoIP threats. VOIPSA is intended to help the companies with various white papers, research and discussion lists. The organization was formed to prevent VoIP threats from hampering the growth of the VoIP technology. It is also actively involved in creating tools, plans, procedures and best practices.

The majority of VoIP’s security threats arise as a result of routing voice traffic over IP networks. VoIP is vulnerable to denial-of-service (DoS) attacks that are protocol aware because it inherits all the DoS vulnerabilities present on the network. Besides these vulnerabilities, there are other security risks specific to IP telephony.

VOIPSA has categorized, cataloged and interpreted those security risks in a detailed taxonomy. VOIPSA manages three different working groups:

1. Threat Taxonomy Group: Aims to identify and define potential VoIP security risks, create awareness and educate the general public, members and companies about VoIP security threats.
2. The Security Requirements Group: Aims to develop the required software and hardware to enable secure unified communication.
3. The Best Practices Group: Aims to develop new security practices and policies to protect the industry from the threats identified in the taxonomy.