Sierra (Martin) Davis, M.B.A.

She/her

Education: Bachelor of Science in management information systems (May 2013)

Master of Business Administration in data science from Rockhurst University

Currently pursuing a Doctor of Philosophy in health informatics from the University of Missouri

McNair Project: Examining Security Measures of Voiceover IP (2012)

Mentor: Michael Chilton, Ph.D.

Consumers and businesses are attracted to Internet telephony because of its many benefits such as: low cost, flexibility, and calling features, and because it can be implemented with existing Internet connections. This technology is called Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). VoIP telephones are digital but to the user, they look and function exactly as their analog counterparts. Since VoIP is a simple Internet application, However, VoIP's benefit of attaching directly to the Internet also makes it susceptible to the same kind of threats and attacks that are associated with the Internet in general.

This study will investigate VoIP security: how do certain threats render a VoIP system vulnerable and how attacks can affect a VoIP system; how these threats can be dealt with, and how commercially available VoIP software and services implement security to protect against attacks. Practitioners, consumers and researchers need a method to help classify threats, attacks and vulnerabilities of VoIP systems that can aid in identifying, classifying, developing and evaluating safeguards for this technology. The intent of this paper is to develop a decision matrix to assist in this regard and to show how it can be utilized in VoIP security research and practice.