Gartner: "Consider" Cisco CallManager 4.1

When enterprise-level security issues runin confluencewith technological opportunities, security and network types are appropriately cautious. Maybe there is a causality loop here -- technology-adept but personally cautious types are drawn to IT security as a profession where their own character traits can be positively harnessed. That's why incremental, "decimal-point" releases of hardware and software raise caution flags in the IT security brigade.

I sense we will see this play out in the near-term prospects for Cisco Systems' CallManager 4.1, which was released last week. In a new report, Gartner Research praised the solution's VoIP signaling and voice stream encryption capabilities. Such encryption, which protects against IP phone eavesdropping and connection spoofing, has largely been limited to LAN-based IP phone users. Now, with encryption available for Cisco's VoIP gateways, users on other Cisco platforms will be able to conduct secure IP phone calls.

But back to my point, which is why rather than gush, Gartner analysts Isabel Montero and Steve Blood advise IT types to "consider the benefits of CallManagers ability to provide encryption within VoIP gateways, (but) evaluate voice security within the broader context of a communications security strategy that includes e-mail, which can be just as sensitive as voice communication."