As service providers and operators extend or migrate to IP environments, new challenges arise every day, notably from commercial pirates. And while they may appear legitimate to consumers, these illegal actors aren’t just stealing content. They restrict an operator’s ability to reassure content owners that their assets will be safe, impacting operators’ ability to invest in content and provide jobs for the future.
Traditionally, operators employed a DRM to mitigate any leaks, however the maze of networks – and often lack of control over the end device – means a new strategy needs to be employed. In a recent interview with IABM TV, Tim Pearson, Senior Director, Product Marketing, explained the premise of active streaming protection, NAGRA’s approach to helping operators combat the threat to their services by developing bespoke and holistic strategies to fit their specific requirements.
Formed of a series of tools designed to disrupt pirate activity and protect services, active streaming protection has been developed to enable operators to protect themselves now and in the future. For example, an operator may have premium sports content or content owners are mandating the use of watermarking technology, in which case there is a suite of NexGuard forensic watermarking solutions available to fit their specific requirements. However, they may start to face challenges from pirates, or believe they are facing an increasing threat of piracy as they enter a new market. The NAGRA Anti-Piracy services will show where those threats are coming from, the type of the threat, and the proposed protective and mitigative actions to take.
Active Streaming Protection is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. It recognises the different threats faced by operators, and can ensure that, as a service grows, so too does the level and variety of protection to secure it. Here are the six tools that can enable a successful active streaming protection strategy:
Advanced security: Driven by a security services platform, this block ensures centralised protection and management of content through a single platform, regardless of whether it will be delivered over IP of traditional linear broadcast network;
Secure playback: Delivering client-level security, this block is often enabled through an mDRM approach, but also includes common client player to ensure operational efficiency, particularly for those providers who may be providing their services to devices that aren’t served by the mainstream DRM providers;
Secure streaming: Delivers a range of business-focused logic and insight to combat situations like credential sharing, device authentication or session management. This allows operators to take control of a number of aspects and govern how consumers interact with the service;
Anti-piracy: A key block that fights against content and credential sharing, alongside identifying leak sources and performing often automatic and immediate mitigation actions, anti-piracy services can revoke access to an operator’s service from certain devices or send advisory messages to end devices, encouraging users to move to legitimate access;
Forensic watermarking: Working neatly alongside an anti-piracy block, watermarking is key to combatting content sharing. It can also work alongside the security services platform within the ‘Advanced Security’ service to enable providers to take action to mitigate theft;
Security analytics: Analytics is a main driver in successful streaming protection services today – Further, analytics that leverage AI and machine learning at its core, can provide consumer behaviour insight alongside identifying correlations in pirate service monitoring data. Derived from the other five services, security analytics helps to rapidly identify and act on a threat, both at the executive and operational level – for example, inappropriate credential sharing.
Contacts us to learn how NAGRA’s Active Streaming Protection can help you protect your service.