VoIP Security: A Performance and Cost-benefit Analysis

Voice over IP (VoIP) has become the standard technology for telephony and has replaced the old Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). This research focuses on the security aspect of VoIP systems. Unsecured VoIP systems are vulnerable to malicious attacks. However, the overhead of the security techniques hampers the performance of VoIP systems. This research analyzes how a VoIP system performs with different security techniques. The performance of the VoIP system is analyzed on different types of data networks such as IPv4, IPv6, and IPv4/IPv6 mixed networks, and in scenarios such as with and without network traffic. Additionally, the research includes a cost-benefit analysis of the security techniques, to determine their cost effectiveness. Based on the performance analysis and cost-benefit analysis, this research proposes three security techniques that can be applied to VoIP systems deployed on IPv4, IPv6, and IPv4/IPv6 networks.