by Tim Pearson, Sr. Director Product Marketing
In today’s M&E industry, to remain competitive, you must stay on your toes when it comes to innovation and evolution. From pay-TV operators to broadcasters and content owners, there is an increasingly broad range of topics that are driving strategic conversations.
Taking into consideration the speed at which change is happening, and the variables associated with every aspect of the M&E ecosystem, NAGRA developed this special blog series focusing on seven timely topics and plot the best course of action that will generate the greatest success for your organization moving forward.
In this first installment, we are focusing on security. Not just content security however (although that is at the core) but the overall service security. Such service security includes comprehensive digital security for the new connected world, the continued evolution of piracy in the M&E space, and the latest in cloud-based infrastructures. Understanding the implications of these threats, knowing how to recognize them, and better still, what you can do to protect both your assets and your delivery infrastructure., are key as we move into the next decade.
The Need for Scalable Service Protection
The increasing need for a comprehensive framework for how content is being distributed is creating an opportunity for operators and content owners to address a multitude of consumer devices across different networks. Unfortunately, however, the current fragmented approach is also an ideal breeding ground for wider service threats - particularly for content pirates. Adding to this threat are consumers connecting anytime and anywhere, forcing the global video ecosystem to face a new daunting reality: an increasing attack surface not just for content, but also for personal data and consumer privacy.
To address these issues, an approach that provides a comprehensive level of active streaming protection is required. Going beyond traditional CAS and DRM, active streaming protection is designed to provide operators with the ability to select key capabilities based on the direct threats to their service, as well as the broader threats at the service level from the increasing adoption of IoT devices. Delivering scale across operations of different sizes, active streaming protection provides online trial options, affords operators the benefit of a highly modular ‘pick and mix’ strategy and leverages adaptive security for optimal performance across a vast client device ecosystem.
One example of this is NAGRA’s flagship offering cloud.SSP, an advanced and modular SaaS security services platform that comprehensively addresses all dimensions of content and service protection for the connected world. Proven in the industry, it is designed to scale and flexibly adapt according to any operator or content owner’s unique business needs.
The Piracy Landscape is Evolving:
While we mentioned the issue of piracy above, let’s take a more in-depth look at this evolving industry challenge. We know a holistic approach to fighting piracy is highly effective by combining technology, investigations and legal actions to put a stop to illegitimate streaming of premium content. With the right tools in place, sports rights holders, content owners and service providers can leverage advanced detection, real-time monitoring and takedown services, strategic and legal counsel, as well as deep global intelligence and local expertise. NAGRA’s industry-leading content protection technologies (i.e. conditional access, DRM and forensic watermarking) combined with our unique anti-piracy services, continue to be successful in disrupting today’s piracy ecosystem.
Moving forward and once the M&E industry moves to a common base-level adoption, we can expect enhanced and highly-effective anti-piracy solutions in areas such as automated content recognition, network monitoring, IP blocking and other advanced technical countermeasures to be important conversation points. For example, IP blocking is an important tool for service disruption to pirated content. This technology is an extra weapon in fighting illegal content streaming, an important factor in driving consumers to choose legitimate services for their entertainment.
Taking it to the Cloud
Delivering premium services directly to consumer devices and leveraging back-end cloud infrastructure is essential to the next generation of content delivery via IP networks to consumers. As a result, 2020 will be the year of prioritizing a laser focus on security alongside effective cloud migration.
Pay-TV service providers will be looking to rationalize architectures (and by consequence lower overheads) by selecting a scalable, modular, cloud-based solution to unify all aspects of their service protection needs – regardless of which network or device they’re delivering content to.
For main-screen TV, an innovative example is TVkey Cloud, which is powered by NAGRA’s Cloud.SSP, its Security-as-a-Service platform that enables a wide range of broadcast, IPTV and OTT service models. This level of cloud security ultimately benefits everyone; new smart TV sets offer more convenience and value, pay-TV service providers can simplify customer acquisition via virtualizing the set-top box within the Smart TV and can extend their market reach with secure OTT content delivery, and of course, consumers get access to the content they love.
Stay tuned for Part Two of our “Insights for M&E Success in 2020” series focusing on trends in consumer behavior and its impact on service providers and content owner’s business strategies.
For more information on our comprehensive digital security portfolio, please contact us here.