Thursday, 31 May 2012
By Stuart Alan Becker
Phnom Penh Post
General Manager
Sampath Perera of Techenture Consulting speaks to the Post about
Microsoft Lync software yesterday in Phnom Penh. Photograph: Vireak
Mai/Phnom Penh Post
The Cambodian Ministry of Defence has begun using Microsoft Lync, an
instant messaging client that uses IP protocols, like those used by the
internet, to integrate communications from radios to smart phones,
enabling secure communications between commanders and troops via many
different kinds of mobile devices.
General Manager Sampath Perera
of Techenture Consulting, said his firm is proud to be helping the
Ministry of Defence integrate their communications with security and
speed.
“Basically if you take traditional military communication,
you have radio, which is limited to a certain area. The general can be
in another country, but with Microsoft Lync he can use his smart phone
to talk with radio channels even on the battlefield,” Perera said.
The
system runs with Microsoft Lync Server software on computer hardware
owned by the client and has built-in high-level encryption, Perera said.
“The
advantages are that you don’t really need to throw away the existing
systems. When you integrate the radio systems with Lync, communications
are available anywhere in the world.”
Sri Lankan Perera, 28, has
been in Cambodia for about four years. He says many other organizations
including banks with multiple branches, mobile operators, government
agencies and NGOs could benefit from such secure unified communications
capability.
“The benefit for a customer with Microsoft Lync is
that you can replace the traditional communications system. You can
integrate a standard PBX telephone system, Yahoo Messenger, Skype and
different applications. When they want to do a phone call they pick up
the phone and use Skype. You can integrate all these things because
Microsoft now owns Skype,” Perera said.
“The main benefit for
business is they don’t need to invest in different devices for different
channels of communications. They need land phones, fax machines,
separate emails, chat and instant messaging. With link you integrate
all devices, it saves costs and money on IP administration,” he said.
Giving
the example of the Lync system capability using The Phnom Penh Post,
Perera said, “If the operator at The Post rings your extension, it will
ring your mobile phone. No matter where you are, we get your call to
you. If you are a large organisation with many branch offices and a need
to call from branch to branch, it costs money. By using Lync, you can
deploy IP communications.”
The cost of the system depends on the number of users, Perera says.
“If
you have 30 to 50 users with standard Lync, then we are looking at
somewhere like $5,000 for the deployment and that’s just for the
software. With the hardware it would total from $6,000 to $7,000. The
cost is based on the number of client access licenses,” he said.
5 comments:
Hmmmm... what prevent the hackers from launching DoS attacks on the radios in the field? Can the said encryption be trusted? I think high level security encryption is subject to export restriction by the US government, meaning the US government only allows the industry to export the encryption which it can already break.
Having some level of encryption is far better than having non at all.
There is no such things as hack-proof encryption, only a matter of time before it is breakable, even the Pentagon's state of the art firewall are breakable by hackers.
I hope this guy is not already working for our enemies but it is a good start. We should still have some old fashion communication between our forces stand by UN case our more richer enemies attack out network.
True that there is no such things as hack-proof encryption, but what is the point of having an encryption already known to be broken? Why go though the trouble to encrypt a message that you know it can be decrypted by unintended receipients?
Any encryption, no matter how sophisticated it is, can eventually be cracked. The idea is that by the time hackers find a way to break it, we already move to a different encryption algorithm and stay a head of the game.
1 June 2012 12:55 PM
Your point is taken!
However, unless we have our very own experts to develope the encryption from scratch, then we must rely on foreign entity and/or governments to supply those technologies. As long as this is the case, we will always be vulnerable.
Having said that, it is how we analyse the strengths and weaknesses and make customisations to suit our operational needs that counts.
It is no different to buying military hardwares from foreign countries, by knowing their trengths and weaknesses we can make appropriete adjustments to suit our needs and also provides us added security.
Like another commentor states "it is a good start".
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