Call Recording Idea Using Cisco Unity

[tjkreutz_1]

Hi There,

I'm was wondering if anyone has thought of or is currently employing Unity as a call recording server,  I have a secure call recording requirement for a contact center application (CUCCE) as well as some E911 phones.  Current market surveys has revealed that secure VoIP call recording is not a product. However, company's like Telstrat are working on it.

In the mean time, I thought of using CUCM 8.0(2) or greater, and was thinking of potentially experimenting with the built in phone bridging function to allow the bridging of active phone calls directly to Unity.  Unity signaling and media in transit can be secured using TLS and SRTP. Additionally, Unity media at rest can also be encrypted.  Therefore, if Unity can successfully be integrated to accept these bridged calls via a separate Voice Mail Pilot DN and we can allocate enough voice mail ports and backend exchange message store disk space, we might have our own secure call recording solution.

Any thoughts pro or con on this idea are graciously requested.

Thanks

[David Hailey]

So my first thought is I'm curious to know how you envisioned this working.  The Barge (built-in bridge) and cBarge functions only work for shared lines.  In order for them to work, they would have to be invoked by another party - so, for instance:

Tom and Sue share x1001

Tom receives a call

Sue must invoke Barge or cBarge and Privacy must be disabled for the feature to work

So, if you're planning to use Unity for this - what did you think the setup would look like?

FYI - I'm not being critical of your idea.  I thought you might want to bounce this off some other minds so I'm just getting the conversation started.

Hailey

[tjkreutz_1]

Hi David,

Thanks so much for the response.

Thanks for the Barge and cBarge functional info. too. I was not aware of the

actual operation of those functions, but was planning to investigate the

bridging function contained on the phones to see if it could be used the way

that I envisioned. Based on your response, it sounds like the phone bridging

function may not work as I was anticipating. Perhaps some form of special call

forwarding may be an option or may need to be designed?

The idea is only conceptional. The Cisco solution design, if even currently

possible, may be implemented using whatever features are available in CUCM and

Unity that ultimately produces the desired end solution. Then again, this idea

may not be feasible unless some custom design and/or scripting is applied.

Basically, the idea is to be able to redirect the secure audio (SRTP) stream

from any VoIP endpoint to a recording server (e.g. Unity in this case).

Currently, there is no such COTS solution available on the market. Here's what

I was thinking.

Call Recording Scenarios

1. User A on phone A calls Phone B, and User B on phone B answers the call, the

Call in Progress must be recorded locally.

2. User A on phone A calls Phone B, and User B on phone B answers the call,

while the call is simultaneously routed to the PSAP via the PSTN GWY., and again

the Call in Progress must be recorded locally.

We need to fork/fwd the call from Phone B, while User B is still active on the

Call to a Unity Voice Mail port, so the call can be recorded simultaneously.

This is where the bridge idea come in. In effect a three/four way call could

exist. Secure conference resources can also be made available, if they could be

leveraged for a larger conference bridge.

Note: We have some weird 911 requirements where our 911 calls need to be routed

to the PSAP via PSTN GWY and also forked to several NOC 911 phones for local

monitoring and recording. As far as I know, this hasn't been done before, and

I'm currently in the architecture phase.

I am fully aware that there may not be a COTS solution to this requirement, but

anything is possible with enough time and resources.

Thanks again for your help Dave

[David Hailey]

I'll be quite honest, I think it would be quite difficult to implement something like this on your own.  I'm also not sure that Unity would be the ideal recording server.  I can see Contact Center fitting in there given it's capabilities to monitor/record for supervisors/agents...but Unity is a stretch for me to envision. However, I thought you might want to look a bit further at some of the capabilities of the UC 8.0 solution.  Specifically, here is a tidbit on secure call monitoring and recording.  This is just a starting place and you'd need to research this feature/capability more but...it's worth a look:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/cucm/security/8_0_1/secugd/secuscmr.html#wp1067763

Hailey

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