U.S. DoD has a new option for secure calls through Microsoft Teams

A newly certified session border controller will help the U.S. Department of Defense make more secure calls.

What you need to know

• Ribbon's Session Border Controller 5400 has been certified by the U.S. DoD as part of Microsoft Teams deployments.
• Session Border Controller 5400 enables secure voice calling through Microsoft Teams.
• Last year, the U.S. DoD rolled out Microsoft Teams environments for up to 4 million people.

Microsoft Teams deployments across U.S Department of Defense (DoD) agencies and DoD communication networks can now use Ribbon's Session Border Controller (SBC) 5400. SBCs help secure communication by separating internal networks from external networks. They provide an extra layer of security for communication such as video calls through Microsoft Teams. The U.S. DoD announced a planned rollout of Microsoft Teams environments to up to four million people last year.

Session Border Controller 5400 earned a U.S. DoD Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC) certification, which means that Session Border Controller 5400 will now appear on the DISA Approved Products List.

To earn the JITC certification from DISA, a product needs to go through testing for quality, security, interoperability, and reliability. Ribbon's Session Border Controller 5400 is the only SBC that's earned a JITC certification with Microsoft.

Having a JITC certification means that Teams deployments can deliver secure communication for the DoD. Jason Payne, the chief technology officer for Microsoft Federal, said, "collaborating with Ribbon for its SBCs is another example of how we work closely with our ecosystem partners to extend the reach of Teams to the world's most security-conscious environments."

Ribbon's website breaks down some of the items that its SBC 5400 provides:

• Advanced Scalability – The capacity of the SBC 5400 hardware platform can be easily expanded to 75,000 concurrent sessions by simply upgrading media interface capacity via software licensing.
• Unparalleled Performance – While many competitive SBCs lose as much as half their call capacity by encrypting VoIP media streams, the SBC 5400 easily supports just as many encrypted secure RTP sessions as normal unencrypted media sessions.
• Robust Security – Denial of Service (DoS) flood attacks were launched at the SBC 5400's SIP-signaling and media ports while it handled high call volumes. The SBC 5400 effectively deflected these attacks and no legitimate calls were dropped irrespective of call complexity.

"We are delighted to continue our longstanding relationship with Microsoft and are very proud to be the Session Border Controller solution that enables Microsoft Teams to deliver secure voice calling within the Teams platform across the DoD and its agencies," said Steven Bruny, Ribbon's executive vice president of sales for the Americas region. "DoD employees can now leverage all of the rich collaboration features the Teams platform offers including secure in-app voice calling powered by our market-proven Session Border Controller."

Session Border Controller 5400 can be scaled to up to 75,000 concurrent sessions through a licensing model. A different product from Ribbon, its SBC 5000 Series, was approved as part of a Microsoft Skype for Business JITC-certified solution.