Amid rising concerns about the implications of voice-over-IP services, an industry group is looking to define best practices for security and privacy

The Voice over IP Security Alliance, a recently formed industry group, has created a new committee to define security requirements for Internet telephony networks.

The committee will define security requirements across a variety of voice-over-IP (VoIP) deployments and address issues such as security technology components, architecture and network design, network management, and end-point access and authentication, the group said on Monday. Another panel will research infrastructure weaknesses, vulnerabilities and emerging application attacks, the group said.

The alliance was set up with the aim to generate public awareness and focus on best practices for security and privacy of Internet telephony networks. The alliance said membership of its technical board had risen to 50, with newer members including a McAfee division, MCI, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Samsung Telecommunications America, Sprint and VeriSign.

Internet telephony, which is unregulated, is becoming popular due to cheap rates. With this popularity have come fears of spam and viruses though there have been no major attacks as of yet on Net telephony.

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