Skype


Protect Your Microsoft Skype for Business / Microsoft Lync




 Microsoft Lync has become Skype for Business.


> Protect critical VoIP services

> Microsoft Skype for Business / Lync in Application Visibility & Control



Challenges
Like all other Unified Communications solutions, Lync depends on the availability of a reliable, multimedia-ready networking infrastructure.

Microsoft Lync Server is an enterprise real-time communications server software, providing the infrastructure for enterprise instant messaging, presence, VoIP, ad hoc and structured conferences (audio, video and web conferencing) and PSTN connectivity through a third-party gateway or SIP trunk. Wireless LAN networks are seeing an increased use of Microsoft Lync for variety of use cases such as instant messaging (IM) and presence within a single organisation. This includes support for rich presence information, file transfer and voice and video communication. The other major components are VoIP telephony and video conferencing through the desktop communicator client. Remote access is possible using the desktop, mobile and web clients.

With the increasing use of Microsoft Lync as a collaboration tool, companies need the ability to detect, report, and optimize the performance of Microsoft Lync suite of applications in order to provide a superior quality of experience to their end users. In addition, companies that consider Microsoft Lync traffic to be mission-critical want the ability to make sure it gets higher priority than other applications running on the network.

The real-time nature of services provided by Microsoft Lync Server, combined with the business-critical status of the underlying software applications, requires high availability for IT departments implementing Microsoft Lync Server 2010 and 2013. 



Solution Features and Benefits

  • Shield DNS services from botnets
  • Server Host Protection
  • DoS mitigation
  • Prevent remote attacker to executing malicious code (DLL vulnerabilities)
  • Prevent malicious code execution
  • Encryption communications 
  • Application load balancing
  • High Availability / Disaster Recovery for SQL servers 


  • Detect and optimise Lync data traffic
    • Optimise user quality of service
    • Quality of Service analytics & management
    • Create high availability / system fail and recovery
    • Application health monitoring
    • Simulate application attack / max loading
    • Protect against breaches and DDoS attacks
    • Enable to allow the SIP and additional protocols used within Lync for communications, whilst inspecting for attacks, and viruses.
 

Application Layer Protection
 
Your network is only as good as the applications and IP services that run on it. From triple-play services (e.g., data, voice, video) to social networking applications (Skype).
  • Enable Windows 7 and 8 laptops and tablets, Windows Phone 7 and 8, Macs, iPhones, iPads, and Android smartphones. 
  • Ensuring a High-Quality Microsoft Lync Experience Over Wi-Fi 802.11ac 
  • Wire like performance without wires
  • Wi-Fi performance and functional testing 
  • Reduce risk, improve ROI, and maximise mobile user satisfaction 
  • Web application control 



Application Policy Enforcement
  • Visibility: Improved visibility into application usage based on user and group information can help you maintain a more accurate picture of network activity. 
  • Policy control: Tying user information to the security policy to safely enable applications or specific application functions while reducing the administrative effort associated with employee moves, adds and changes. 
  • Logging, reporting, forensics: In the event that a security incident occurs, forensics analysis and reporting can include user information.
  • Application whitelisting (access control): Only authorised applications may be run. Unknown or unauthorised applications are automatically excluded.



Wireless infrastructure
  • Wireless networking solutions that support voice, video and data demands. 
  • Also to support BYOD and collaborative working


Load Balancing 
Challenge
  • Increasing usage and a growing employee base is straining Lync resources, resulting in sub-optimal user experience.
  • Downtime and maintenance for Lync servers causes disruption in employee efficiency and productivity.
  • Critical business communications and collaboration are hampered by slow Lync server response.
  • Confidential company information is distributed via Lync, raising the risk of breaches and attacks.
Solution

Enterprises can provide Lync services to a large number of employees, load balancing clients to optimal Lync servers at every given point in time.

Ensure guaranteed uptime, even if a Lync server goes offline or into maintenance mode.

End users are able to access Lync applications faster due to multiple Lync server optimisations such as HTTP compression.

Lync services are protected from malicious traffic such as DDoS attacks.

  • SIP Health Checks: Voice can be heavily affected by jitter, which is caused by latency in the network. Load balancer acts as a proxy between client and server and will ensure an even flow of traffic to avoid service degradation.
  • Persistence: (also known as Affinity) – When clients are using multiple services such as Desktop Sharing and IM, efficient traffic management dictates that these aggregated services need to traverse multiple different servers. With persistence, all requests are directed to the same server based on source IP.
  • SSL Offload: Since Lync relies on HTTPS (SSL) to encrypt critical enterprise data, the Load Balancer can move the burden off SSL encryption and decryption from the Lync server to the ADC, freeing up processing power.
  • Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB): If employees are dispersed in multiple locations, the Load Balancer can improve efficiency by directing Lync traffic to the closest data center. GSLB can also be used for business continuity by distributing traffic across multiple data centers. By supporting multiple high availability options, users can access data seamlessly even in the event of a server or site outage.
  • Native IPv4 and IPv6 support
  • Full Proxy between the clients and the Lync front end servers. This eliminates various network-level attacks.






Contact us today to discuss your requirements in more detail.

P: +44(0)7714 209927

S: +44(0)1273 329753

info@securenetconsulting.co.uk