From the book...
No book of this size could be done in the tight time frame it was done without a great amount of help. First and foremost, I need to thank my wife Lori who, despite being an artist with absolutely zero interest in the subject matter, read each and every page and provided excellent feedback about how the book flowed. Her razor-sharp editing skills definitely made this a more readable book. I could not have done this book, too, without her taking care of everything else going on in our lives. Signing up to write a book in a compressed time frame right before the holidays was not the smartest thing to do. Thanks, Lori – and maybe one of these years, I’ll actually move out of writing purely tech books…
I’m incredibly grateful to my technical editor, Dustin Trammell, who took a great amount of time and care to make sure that the text was technically accurate. He provided solid criticism with solutions and contributed some outstanding ideas about how to make the book stronger. Many thanks, too, to Andy Zmolek, a friend from the VoIPSA circles, who not only first pointed Syngress to me as a potential author but also later provided copious detailed notes and feedback on the chapters. Thanks, as well, to Matthew Cater and Rachel Roumeliotis from Syngress for both approaching me to write this book and then doing all they did to make it a reality.
Thanks, too, to Randy Resnick of the VoIP Users Conference for his many comments and encouragement on the overall text, to Scott Beer of Ingate Systems for feedback on the SIP trunking chapter, and to Martyn Davies, Adam Kalsey, and Alan Percy for their comments. I also have to thank my Blue Box podcast cohost and fellow VoIPSA board member Jonathan Zar, as well as the entire Blue Box community for all the discussions and dialogue since October 2005 that laid the foundation for this book. I need to thank, as well, the many, many people in the IETF Real-time Applications and Infrastructure (RAI) area, who are the real heroes here, as they continue to slave away in the tedious and not very glamorous world of trying to create standards and other mechanisms to make communications more secure.
I want to give a special thanks to Voxeo CEO Jonathan Taylor and President Anne Bowman, who undoubtedly thought I was crazy but didn’t object to me pursuing this book, and to my outstanding Voxeo Conversations team who put up with a tired and sometimes grumpy manager and did their best to not comment on the dark circles under my eyes. (The negative side of using a UC system with video!)
Finally, I want to thank all of the security professionals, developers, and system administrators out there who are working each day to make our communications systems more secure. This book comes out of the many conversations I’ve had with so many of you through the Blue Box podcast, the VOIPSA blog, the VOIPSEC mailing list, and at the many conference presentations I’ve given on VoIP and UC security. Thank you for asking me tough questions and for encouraging me to keep on telling the story – may this book help in some small way to keep those conversations going.
