Profiling the Protection of Sensitive Enterprise Multimedia Communication

Abstract

Voice is, besides email, the major personal communication technology used by employees of an enterprise. Additionally, multimedia communication is getting used more and more in the form of video conferences to decrease travel cost and support environmental protection. Besides oral communication also documents, e.g. presentations, may be shared. Thus sensitive information is likely to be exchanged as part of the communication. Hence, an appropriate security level is of great relevance to protect enterprise’s confidential information. Historically, security measures for communication systems have either been targeted to prevent fraud, thereby securing the operator’s business model, or to provide military-class end-to-end encryption. Neither approach targets the security objectives of enterprises using private and public communication infrastructure for sensitive business exchanges. It is common practice within enterprises to define different data protection classes and associated rules that have to be respected when dealing with sensitive information. Thus, the main contribution here is on one hand an evaluation of relevant available or known security technology from the perspective of protecting sensitive enterprise communication, and a roadmap for an incremental, step-wise introduction of security features in multimedia (including voice and video) communication that allows for a step-wise (incremental) introduction of security features required for different security levels.