Aurelius Cloud Delivers Solid Security – S.Staver

It actually surprises me how INfrequently anyone asks how secure our hosted voice solution is, the Aurelius Virtual Solution (AVS).  Security is always at the top of our list when we launch new features and enhancements to our unique solution.  Possibly more prospects and customers don’t ask because most hosted voice providers want to avoid the “security” discussion so it is not something that is marketed or advertised as a strength.  Security is typically top of mind for any organization considering putting their business applications and sensitive data in the cloud.  Well I am going to tell you the same goes for cloud communications.

There are two deployment models for AVS, both of them frankly provide the most secure cloud voice solutions available today.  As we started designing our cloud voice solution it was clear that one thing that would differentiate AVS in the market place was SECURITY.  Thus we adopted the best of the best manufacturers and technology into our solution.

When connecting our Cloud to a customer premise, 95% of our customers have on of our Gateway Appliances managing the prioritization of data streams containing real time voice packets (RTP) but more importantly it is transmitting RTP and other critical client and voice application data over a secure and encrypted IPsec tunnel.

By leveraging several technologies built into the Edge Gateway, ShoreTel telephones connect securely from a small or home office to our data center where the Edge Gateway resides.  Remote Access Secure Tunneling (RAST) protocol deploys an encrypted VPN tunnel that uses UDP to transport voice packets to maximize voice quality in situations with significant packet loss, and uses TCP as a fallback transport mechanism, if UDP fails.  For the Client, the Edge Gateway uses a reverse proxy to service the remote communicator application needing access to various ShoreTel services related to voicemail audio streaming or downloading, collaboration, soft phone, and Contact Center agents.  The reverse proxy helps with data encryption, load balancing, caching static content, data compression, and data security.

These industry standard security measures help to ensure that our Aurelius Virtual Solution provides the highest level of security for our customers’ Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS).