VoIP and Emergency Services, “What does VoIP offer?”

As with any changes to the way we communicate making it much bigger issue for the emergency services, Dan Worth of BAPCO reported from The London Fire Brigade Training Centre, where the South East Region conference, “What does VoIP offer?”, was held recently.
The curate’s egg that is VoIP is currently presenting both positives and problems and it still requires a critical eye to make sure technology does not lead purely because it can. But as conferences such as this demonstrate, there are companies and protocols being developed all the time that the emergency services will be able to turn to for guidance.

The 33 delegates in attendance (plus attendees from exhibiting companies) also enjoyed guided tours of the London Fire Brigade Museum that had been organized so they could appreciate how far emergency services had developed over the years.

Companies exhibiting at the conference were: Avaya, APD, Mercury – Technology, CYFAS, Samdale, Extreme Networks, Arqiva, Resilience Communications and Milltelecom.

Bapco report includes;
Transforming communication using VoIP
Bruce Everest, Emergency Technologies Director, Avaya
Bruce Everest of Avaya, the sponsor for the day, looked at how VoIP has impacted companies and the emergency services from a business point of view.

The Emergency Services’ perspective
Lee Warhurst, Secretary to ACPO Communications Group
Serving Police Officer Lee Warhurst gave some perspectives on the Emergency Services’ concerns with regard to emergency calls being made over VoIP systems, as well as giving an overview of the Ofcom consultations into the regulation of VoIP services and the potential issues this has raised.

Handling VoIP emergency calls
John Medland, BT 999 Policy Manager
Starting with some statistics John Medland underlined that VoIP only makes up a relatively small percentage of the calls that come through to emergency centre control rooms – about 1,000 a month compared to 2.4 million a month from fixed and mobile numbers. But despite this the issues surrounding VoIP still demand serious attention.

VoIP forensics and evidence gathering
Mark Hayward, Security Consultant, SELEX Communications
The talk was opened with the straight-to-the-point statement that ‘VoIP is hackable’, and Mark went on to outline some of the ways in which this can happen. He also looked at some of the actual and potential solutions to this hacking. Flooding the network with info to stop voice calls being made, eavesdropping on conversations to gather information or even to save money are some of the way VoIP can be attacked. Identity fraud can take place too and there are numerous free-to-download programs designed to allow people to hack into VoIP accounts.

Converged communications within public sector and Emergency Services
Kelly Scott, Extreme Networks
The final talk of the day focused on the need for a network infrastructure that provides organizations, groups, and people, a secure, reliable and available environment to guarantee application delivery and combat the security issues of today’s networks.
One could find the complete article VOIP - out with the old in with the new.


tag: Emergency services, e999, e911, VoIP, SIP, VoIP forensics, Identity fraud, eavesdropping, BT 999, Ofcom, Avaya, APD, Mercury – Technology, CYFAS, Samdale, Extreme Networks, Arqiva, Resilience Communications, Milltelecom