Working with SIP trunking is always a challenge. I've worked with SIP for many years gaining plenty of experience and last year, decided to get certified. I paid for the course and test at the Avaya approved The SIP School. Then proceeded to get too busy to take the course.
Recently, I've been called to a couple of other larger Avaya Business Partners sites, where their customer's IP Office using SIP had been hacked. Plenty of overseas calls were made. Putting the units on the Internet without a firewall (not even the internal firewall was enabled) was the first mistake. And then nothing was locked down at these sites. Hackers were allowed to make their own extensions and more. Newbie mistakes. Unbelievable that these sites were installed by Avaya Business Partner's at the SME Expert level. After locking down these systems, I decided it's time to get that certification behind my name.
Logged into the course at The SIP School and proceeded to learn more than I expected. Experience was not enough. New things come out every day on SIP. It was great to get updated information and learn, really learn, SIP. The SIP School SSCA course provides very extensive knowledge into every nuance of the SIP process.
SIP is a broad and evolving technology that is extending capabilities of so many things outside the scope of what I’ve generally been exposed to. I focus more on SIP trunking with Avaya IP Office, where the direction is to engage SIP for cost savings and feature enhancements which can’t be achieved by analog trunks or PRI. There are security concerns however, pointing out in a previous paragraph, that make businesses stop when deciding on their communication choices. On its own, IP Office is not as secure as it could be. The good news is, IP Office release 9 (8.1+) supports the Avaya Session Border Controller for Enterprise (ASBCE), which can provide secure SIP trunk connectivity* and remote phone security. *ITSP’s must also support the security offers to match.
So here I stand, proud to be experienced and certified on SIP. Thank you, SIP School for providing a great learning experience and knowledge sharing.
-Glenn Bishop
