What is a Session Border Controller?
Technology has changed all aspects of our lives. Whether we are at home or the office, we use machines, devices, or techniques to save us time, effort, and other resources.
Businesses also strive to make their processes more efficient, and technology plays a key role in achieving this goal. For example, with the use of cloud-based phone systems, you can make a complete work from anywhere on any device communication platform with a chance of cutting cost on your domestic, long distance and international calls. Another benefit associated with VoIP technology is the use of a device called Session Border Controller or SBC.
SBC can play a huge role when it comes to adding extra layers of security to your calls when using a VoIP phone system. This is one of the major steps that you can take to keep your communications secure and compliant. According to MarketWatch, the global SBC market stands at 679.6 million USD in 2020. By 2026, it is expected to grow by 2.9% and reach around 832.1 million USD.
Now, let’s dive deeper and understand what SBC is, how to use it, and why your business needs it.
What is a Session Border Controller?
A Session Border Controller is a device that acts as a firewall for your VoIP network with the main objective of controlling signaling as well as media streams. SBC is deployed to protect SIP-based Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) networks from malicious activities including data theft.
The SBC controls call traffic while applying real-time security and policies. Wherever you have a Firewall setup you need to include a SBC. This device is primarily installed to ensure that calls can be properly and securely carried out throughout the journey. Without SBCs, you might experience communication interruptions and security issues, instead of saving money like it’s meant to do.
How Does a Session Border Controller Work?
Imagine SBC like a Gatekeeper for your network. It is located ‘at the end’ of your business network setup or in the cloud at the service provider side, and it helps monitor all phone calls or sessions. It assesses each session and allows only authorized ones to occur. This interworking system creates a port where only authorized information is connected and transferred through the network, keeping unwanted traffic out.
Due to this filtration process, the chances of an outsider hacking your data by targeting your VoIP network are significantly reduced. SBCs are crucial for any VoIP system to work smoothly and securely.
Additionally, SBC utilizes call limiting so that there is limited traffic through active connections. Fraudulent activities usually happen in high volumes to “premium-rate numbers,” and the owner of the connection pays the bill. Thus, having a system to limit available bandwidth will prevent attackers from using or selling access control to your Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunks.
Session Border Controller Benefits
Let’s have a look at the benefits of SBC in detail.
1. Improved Security
With telecom fraud and PBX hacking on the rise, it’s important to keep your network secure. SBC helps your firewall do its job and keeps attackers out of your connections.
Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) attacks can have a significant impact on any enterprise’s productivity and revenue. Some attacks are designed to bring a network down, such as a denial-of-service (DOS) attack.
By overflooding your network with SIP requests, attackers can disrupt or even shut down your whole operation. To prevent these SIP-based attacks you need an SBC to protect your corporate phone systems and ensure secure call flows at all times.
SBC vendors usually offer continuous updates and Software patches to renew their protocols, this reinforces all your security measures and defends you from emerging threats.
Now, let’s review the security features SBC can provide to your organization:
- It provides improved protection against threats like Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed DoS (DDoS)
- Data encryption, which helps you maintain privacy standards as well as tampering within a session
- You can easily update to the latest versions to prepare your networks against emerging security threats
2. Higher Quality and Connectivity
Even though the key purpose of SBC is to keep your telecommunications secure, SBC can also enhance call quality. It can combat and neutralize the negative effects of jitter, delay and packet loss, therefore enhancing the quality of experience on VoIP calls.
The reason for this is that SBC follows certain rules to manage data traffic such as voice packet prioritization, resource allocation, and bandwidth management. All these factors lead to transmitting voice in a much more clear and reliable manner.
3. Interoperability Benefits
Interoperability is a network system’s ability to transmit and receive data between interconnected networks, thus ensuring the expected level of quality to the recipient.
SBC can manipulate SIP messages, meaning it can change the content of the SIP messages by manipulating the SIP headers. This function, known as SIP Message Manipulation (SMM), becomes helpful to achieve interoperability between different vendor networks. SBC interoperability abilities assist IT organizations in enhancing productivity and agility.
4. Topology Hiding
Network topology is the pattern of components within a communication network. Whereas “Network Topology Hiding” refers to concealing all topology information that is sent from a well-protected network to an unreliable network.
This also involves the restoration of the topology-related information in messages from an unreliable network.
SBC can help you provide this essential function. It helps you translate all the IP addresses contained by the SIP messages within the private and public network. The private network is protected by keeping your networks’ identity hidden.
5. Encryption and Decoding
Encryption is where the data or information is encoded in a manner that it becomes impossible to understand as is, until it reaches its final destination. SBC helps you encrypt calls as well as performing the transcoding function when needed.
Some SBCs can also help you encrypt calls and perform decoding when necessary. Since various elements use different protocols and formats of compression, transcoding becomes essential for communication, something that is facilitated by SBC.
How to Setup an SBC
SBC is a scalable technology that can assist businesses of any size. Within an enterprise infrastructure, an SBC may be placed at different places such as:
- The border between the provider and the client.
- At the border of two providers. In this situation, it is called the network to a network-to-network interface.
- Within a VPN provider.
Let’s imagine that you want to configure a Session Border Controller (SBC) to connect Microsoft Teams tenant to your phone system via direct routing. In this scenario, you can use Microsoft Teams admin center or PowerShell to configure and connect an SBC to Direct Routing.
If you are using Using Microsoft Teams, you need to take the following steps:
- On the left side navigation bar, go to Voice > Direct Routing, and then click the SBCs tab.
- Click Add.
- Enter an FQDN for the SBC.
- Configure the following settings for the SBC
- Save.
If you are using PowerShell, you’ll need to:
1. Connect to Skype for Business Online
PowerShell sessions connected to the tenant can be used to pair the SBC to the Direct Routing interface. After you successfully establish a remote PowerShell session, make sure that you can see the commands to manage the SBC.
You can verify the command by copying and pasting in the PowerShell session, and then pressing enter. Now you will be able to see four functions shown here that will help you manage the SBC.
2. Connect the SBC to the Tenant
To connect the SBC to the tenant, use the New-CsOnlinePSTNGateway cmdlet. You need to keep in mind that connecting the SBC is only possible if the domain portion of its FQDN matches one of the domains registered in your tenant
3. Verify the SBC Connection
Your last step is to confirm whether the Session Border Controller is on the list of paired SBCs and then you can validate SIP options.
Should You Use an SBC?
If you’d like to have better security and more control over your business communication systems, SBC is a good investment. Additionally, if you don’t want to manage SBC in the form of hardware, you can also place a virtual SBC.
If your business relies on VoIP technology, then SBC can help you monitor your network systems in real-time.
You should choose a reliable SBC provider and take advantage of this cutting-edge technology. It will help you make your communication much safe, faster, and easier. As a business, the right choice for SBC could help you reduce costs.
Summary
The world of communication is rapidly changing and so are the types of threats we are facing.
Internet-based phone calls, videoconferencing, instant messaging, live broadcasting, and team collaboration are among the many emerging communication technologies. We can safely assume that not only will these technologies evolve in the near future, but also new ones will arrive to challenge existing systems.
Session Border Controller is an essential component for VoIP networks. It will help protect your VoIP system from malicious activities. It offers a higher degree of protection that can help you block attackers during video and audio streaming.
Finally, SBC also offers call routing, encryption, topology hiding, and scalability which are very useful benefits that impact your business credibility and customer’s trust. Now you understand what SBC is, its benefits, how it works, and how to set it up. It’s your job now to start making your communications safer than ever.
