Ribbon Communications Unveils New UC Security, Operations Apps

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Ribbon Communications has launched a suite of UC security and intelligent operations applications for its Ribbon Protect platform, which provides a single view of the end-to end-network.

The platform integrates with existing UC network investments, using behavioral analytics to deliver a “new level of security and intelligent operations,” according to Ribbon. By establishing a baseline of voice, video sessions and IP port activity, the platform and its applications “quickly identify and mitigate deviations from this baseline, whether telephony denial of service (T-DoS) attacks, quality of experience issues, toll fraud or potential data exfiltration,” it said.

Ribbon’s Walter Kenrich

Walter Kenrich, Ribbon’s director of solutions marketing, tells Channel Partners this offering provides security and network\-operations applications for his company’s partners and the ability to have a more holistic view of their networks.

“Examples would be TDoS, enhanced fraud protection, robocalling protection, applications that will help monitor and trouble shoot their networks, and enhanced threat-detection intelligence sharing capabilities to where customers can share policy (black/whitelist) down to UC network elements,” he said. “It puts much more emphasis and focus on securing UC networks. It helps channel partners increase their offering for UC security apps and addresses a glaring weakness that leaves their customers’ UC networks vulnerable to bad actors.”

The new apps: mitigate attacks from large volumes of unwanted calls coming into the network; distribute threat intelligence policies across the entire communications network to close the security gap exposed by UC; look for repetitive calling patterns to and from anomalous places and flag them in real-time; stop robocalls before they disrupt customers or employees; and improve the user experience and reduce operational costs, delivering intelligent service quality.

“As customers increasingly migrate to SIP and SIP-based services, they need to be aware of the threats that come with these new services,” Kenrich said. “The new Ribbon Protect platform will help them protect their entire UC network. SIP security is becoming more of a pervasive threat and partners need the tools, detection and monitoring capabilities that will protect them from these new threats.”

Last October, Sonus Networks completed its merger with Genband, creating a $745 million company focused on next-generation communications networking. Sonus then rebranded as Ribbon.

“Corporate networks are an increasingly tempting revenue source for cyberthugs in today’s information economy,” said Kevin Riley, Ribbon’s CTO. “The tremendous growth of SIP adoption means that enterprises must focus on the associated vulnerabilities to address these threats. That’s where Ribbon Protect comes in.”