draft of broad requirements for VoIP security

["Eric Nielsen" <Eric.Nielsen@sylantro.com>]

The draft draft-jacobs-signaling-security-requirements-00.txt 
 
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-jacobs-signaling-security-requirem
ents-00.txt 
attempts to define the body of security requirements 
that must be dealt with in order to carrier-scale VoIP 
deployments. The requirements are generic, and are not 
written relative to specific threats. 

This draft was a direct result of our initial pursuit of a 
light-weight key distribution design to be coupled with ESP. 
Instead of moving straight to a solution Jeff Schiller 
recommended that we publish a requirements draft to have the 
IETF community help determine if a solution exists, to see 
if these security needs of large carrier deployments of SIP, 
MGCP and Megaco can already be met.

A significant issue for this draft is that the requirements 
do not neatly fit into any one WG charter. I believe this 
is more of a security issue than an application level 
issue. To date the SIP WG has worked to fill in a variety
of gaps whereas MGCP and Megaco say not much more than
"just use IPsec".  Security is an essential part of VoIP, 
and many of the needed features exist. Still, the issue of 
a cohesive, workable security solution for carrier-scale 
deployment remains beyond the scope of any one workgroup.
Thus we are posting this note here. 

The goal of this draft is to get agreement on the broader 
requirements, followed by an determining what gaps there 
are between what exists and what is needed. Obviously if 
we could see a full solution, we would not be pursuing this. 
For example, common usage of current technology leads to 
poor practices in handling keying material. The technology 
must be defined so that it is possible to define simple and 
secure common practices. 

We would like to work to get agreement on the requirements, 
as well as how to best meet them. 

Thank you, 

Eric Nielsen 
Sylantro Systems 

Stuart Jacobs CISSP 
Verizon Laboratories