Secure Video Streaming: How To Secure Your Live Videos
While most broadcasters aim to generate as large of an audience as possible, there are actually many purposes to live content that require a more targeted and/or limited audience. On top of this, with digital hackers on the rise, businesses simply must be clued up on how to protect their site and content from potential attacks. Live streaming is no exception.
How can businesses control who has access to their live streams and ensure complete security?
There are a number of things that can be done to boost the overall security of live videos, to protect both broadcasters in front of the lens and those tuning in.
What features should a secure video streaming platform have?
Password protection
One way to control who has access to your live streams is to implement password protection. This way, you can distribute your password to the relevant people and ensure that no potentially sensitive content is accessed by the wrong people. While hackers have been known to find ways to access passwords, it’s a simple way to share your video content with a specific set of people.
Payment encryption
As live streaming grows in popularity and people become familiar with the different ways it can be used, naturally, businesses are capitalising on this and monetising their streams. If you’re live streaming an event, webinar, debate, or anything online in exchange for payment, it’s essential to make sure your customers' payments are protected. Fail to do so, and you risk finding yourself in tricky legal scenarios or losing out on potential customers if they don’t feel confident in providing their payment details.
To secure your payment process for viewers, you should use SSL encryption. This uses an encryption algorithm to protect all information being passed between servers, including highly sensitive and personal information like payment details.
Geographic or domain restrictions
As well as the option to password protect your live videos, you can place secondary restrictions on who can view and embed your videos. Domain restrictions allow you to control which specific domains have permission to embed your streams. Simply make a list of all the domains that are allowed access to your embed code, and any that aren’t on the list will be unable to play your videos on their site.
To go one step further, you can place restrictions on the specific areas and locations that can play or view your live streams. If you only want to open your streams up to viewers in certain countries or areas, you can identify the relevant IP addresses and prevent foreign countries from tuning in.
At Zidivo, we understand the importance of offering viewers secure and reliable streams. Our platform gives professional broadcasters complete control over who can view their videos using our players. The HTML5 video player allows users to easily secure their videos and exclude viewers based on their location, IP address, and much more.
Copyright control
When deciding where to share and/or host your live videos, always consider the degree of control you want to maintain. While a number of social channels now offer free and easy-to-use live streaming features, when uploading content using these platforms, you lose the rights to your content. This can open you up to a whole host of issues where security is concerned, as people can and are allowed to legally copy your content, brand it up and share it on their own channels, without needing any permission whatsoever!
With Zidivo and other secure video streaming platforms alike, you get to keep all the rights to your content. You get to decide how you want your videos to look, how long they are, who can watch, and more. We aim to provide customers with a smooth and user-friendly interface, so broadcasters can focus on creating valuable content.
Types of live content that need protecting:
Despite the fact that video security is essential for all broadcasters, some forms of live video content will be more sensitive than others.
Large corporations
Live video is now commonly used to manage the day-to-day running of large businesses. Whether it's used for conference calls, staff training, webinars, company updates, or corporate meetings, it’s essential for these streams to be fully and strictly protected from any potential online threats. Fail to do so, and companies risk sensitive or strategic information being leaked or compromised.
Law and government
Many local and national governments these days are using live streams to share debates and parliamentary sessions with the public or each other. Not every debate will be open to the general public to view and these will only be open to viewers in certain countries, hence security is key in ensuring that streams are only playable in selected locations and/or on certain domains.
Medical
Technology is evolving and with it so are medical procedures and achievements. Live streams are now used regularly in the medical world for both research and treatment purposes. High-quality live streams can be used for training to demonstrate lengthy operational procedures and can even now be obtained from X-rays and scanners for medical professionals to observe a live feed from patients. Of course, medical records are highly confidential, so these streams need to have plenty of security measures in place.
If you’re looking for a live streaming platform where you can maintain all the rights to your content and have a high degree of control over who can play your streams, Zidivo is right for you. Our HTML5 video players are completely customisable so businesses can easily decide how they want their streams to appear and who can access them.
Get in touch with Zidivo today for more information or sign up to a completely free 30-day trial of the platform today!