Humbug Telecom Labs has teamed up with VoIPmonitor to offer a more comprehensive defense against attacks to telecom networks and VoIP connections worldwide. The two companies might be seen as competitors to one another.

They each offer a slightly different service in the same industry, and the collaboration between the two of them is sure to gain ground in the telecom security marketplace. Humbug and VoIPmonitor do have complementary skills. Humbug emphasizes detection, prevention and fraud altering. VoIPmonitor is an open source packet sniffer and call recorder that operates one level deeper in the communication network.

According to Boaz Bechar, VP of Business Development and co-founder of Humbug Telecom Labs, “Telecom attacks are getting more sophisticated every day. The lack of visibility in call traffic means that enterprises usually only find out about attacks when they get their monthly bill. VoIPmonitor enables users of any VoIP PBX (News - Alert) or SIP service to monitor and get alerts based on monitoring the network layer without installation in the PBX.”

The partnership shores up a major weakness in Humbug’s offering of telecom security. The combination of Humbug and VoIPmonitor allows any VoIP system to be connected via DPI rather than Humbug’s API. The carrier grade detection and prevention that Humbug offers is very robust, but as VoIP grows, fraud is spreading into the mostly unprotected realm of IP communications. VoIPmonitor allows Humbug to now provide their quality fraud alerting and analytics to companies that rely on VoIP as a primary collaboration and communications solution.

The VoIPmonitor-empowered Humbug products are available on Humbug’s website, which creates the appearance that this partnership may grow into a merger or acquisition. The two companies are getting flirty, but they appear to be a good match for a more committed relationship in the future.