Potential cost savings and increased collaboration are two reasons why firms are migrating voice telephony to VoIP. Yet these networks can be exploited to launch malicious attacks.

To meet the challenge in contrast to point solutions, Sipera claims to offer patented protection techniques for VoIP, mobile, and multimedia in a single comprehensive solution designed for quick, cost-effective deployment.

"Sipera has developed a comprehensive real-time IP Communications security solution designed to protect networks and end-users against a variety of attacks and service abuse from denial of service (DoS) to spoofing and stealth attacks to VoIP Spam or SPIT," said Director of Marketing Brendan Ziolo.

"Currently, some vendors claim to have VoIP security but in reality they are only offering encryption and authentication which is not enough to protect against application level attacks. The only way to provide the required level of protection is to incorporate a variety of sophisticated VoIP-specific security techniques and methodologies that include anomaly detection, filtering, behavior learning, and verification into a comprehensive security device, which Sipera has done."

In March of this year Sipera released its first product, the Sipera IPCS 310, targeted at enterprises. It supports 1,000 users. The Sipera IPCS 310 is designed to protect both the infrastructure and end-users from a number of malicious, application-specific attacks and service abuse, including DoS/DDoS flood and fuzzing, and more sophisticated reconnaissance, stealth, and VoIP spam attacks.

The Sipera IPCS 310 is being offered by Westcon, a global specialty distributor of networking technology products, as part of the ConvergencePoint Program.

"The agreement with Westcon and the addition of the Sipera IPCS 310 to ConvergencePoint Program is validation of the momentum Sipera is seeing in the marketplace for its VoIP security technology," said Ziolo.

"Sipera has successfully leveraged its extensive knowledge and expertise of security, VoIP, call control, and telephony protocols into unique methods and techniques to protect all elements from threats that endanger the continued exchange of time-critical, business-sensitive information."

The company will be announcing higher end boxes in the fall, along with a solution that targets wireless operators. Sipera intends for each device to support legacy VoIP protocols and enable new applications such as SIP Trunking.

The new products will address larger scale deployments in the enterprise and wireless operator networks. Sipera IPCS products are scalable and can be effectively used by a wide variety of customers with vastly differing market needs from enterprises to operators.

The firm feels the comprehensive nature of the Sipera IPCS products gives it a distinct competitive advantage, as it protects against a wide variety of VoIP attacks in a single box.

"At the same time, the devices are built from the ground up to offer real-time performance, which is crucial to ensure the quality of VoIP," said Ziolo.

"And finally, Sipera has built close relationships with the VoIP infrastructure vendors, so our product is interoperable out of the box, and has been certified by both Nortel and Avaya.

"A number of traditional data security vendors are claiming they have VoIP security offerings," he said.

"However, VoIP uses very different protocols and because it’s real-time, the security solution requires very different protection mechanisms and performance requirements that data security vendors may not easily be able to add to existing products."

Sipera IPCS products are sold through channel partners. The firm announced a global distribution agreement with Westcon Group in April, and is currently recruiting and signing additional resellers, which will be announced over the next few months.

"In March of this year, Sipera came out of stealth mode and launched its first product," Ziolo said.

"Shortly, thereafter we announced our Series B funding, led by Sequoia Capital. Currently, we are expanding the product family and ramping up sales and partnerships to address this growing market."