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VoIP softphone developer CounterPath Solutions (News - Alert) announced today that it has signed a deal with Pretty Good Privacy to integrate Pretty Good’s Zfone, a security, privacy and compliance solution, into its Eyebeam 1.5 and X-Lite 3.0 products.

In so doing, CounterPath will add a new level of security to its VoIP softphone solutions - thus making them even more desirable for enterprises. CounterPath claims it is one of the first manufacturersd to intgrate to IP softphones.

Zfone uses a new protocol called ZRTP to achieve a high level of security without reliance on a PKI (Public Key Infrastructure), key certification, trust models, certificate authorities or key management complexity. Developed by PGP’s founder, Phil Zimmerman (where the “Z” comes from), it is an extension to the Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) which describes a method of Diffie-Hellman (a cryptographic protocol) key agreement for Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP). The software enables key agreements and key management to take place in a pure peer-to-peer manner over the RTP packet stream, without any risk of “man-in-the-middle.” This method works with any pair of standard SIP phones – in fact, the two end devices don’t even need to “know” each other in order to establish a secure session, the just both need to support ZRPT.

According to the two companies, the integration of Zfone media encryption into CounterPath’s softphones will give CounterPath’s customers added protection from unauthorized eavesdropping and recording of calls, as well as Denial-of-Service attacks and other threats.

“As communications-over-IP proliferates, there is increased concern over security of information, especially in enterprise environments where incidences of corporate espionage are becoming more prevalent,” said Donovan Jones, president and COO of CounterPath, in a press release. “We expect this collaboration to positively impact the commercial viability of softphones and play an important role in how corporations protect their intellectual property.”

CounterPath claims it is one of the first manufacturers to integrate ZRPT into a line of SIP softphones.

CounterPath’s SIP softphones and softphone SDKs (Software Development Kits), including the eyeBeam 1.5 softphone, provide VoIP, Video over IP, IM (Instant Messaging) and Presence functionalities, and offer flexible VoIP solutions for some of the world’s largest service providers and equipment manufacturers.

For more information, visit www.counterpath.com or www.pgp.com.

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Patrick Barnard is Assignment Editor for TMCnet and a columnist covering the telecom industry. To see more of his articles, please visit Patrick Barnard’s columnist page.