More and more companies are choosing to deploy Cisco Unified Communications when phasing out their traditional time division multiplexed (TDM)-based systems. Security is now one of the highest selection criteria for IT professionals, becoming as important as the features the system offers, when selecting the new system.

Unified Communications is not dedicated to its own cable infrastructure as the traditional PBX systems were, but rather uses a shared IP-based infrastructure. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) defines a way to carry voice calls over an IP network, including the digitization and packetization of the voice streams. Voice traffic travels along with the data traffic over the same IP network. All of the same security technologies and policies deployed to protect the data network can be used to protect the voice service as well.

Check out this paper to learn best practices for data network security and defending against voice threats.