Phil Zimmerman, the creator of Pretty Good Privacy, is creating an application for communication security on voice over IP. While there are gratis alternatives like Skype that claim to be secure, this system seems to have two clear advantages:
- If it integrates transparently into VOIP networks, it could become the standard by simply working, without users having to change anything about their setup.
- It’ll be an open solution that can be peer-reviewed, making it a better choice than any that relies on security through obscurity
Both of the above will be specially important for corporate users, which could support a whole service industry around this solution.
Nerd note: In the article, he mentions that private-key security is overkill for voice communications, so it’ll probably end up using Diffie-Hellman (or something similar) for key exchange