How to Secure Video Streaming for Your Enterprise
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A secure video streaming platform keeps an enterprise’s live and on-demand video restricted to the people who are supposed to see it. It does that with encryption in transit and at rest, single sign-on and role-based access control, download and playback restrictions such as digital rights management, viewer watermarking, and audit logs that record who watched what. This guide covers why security should drive your choice of business video platform, the four pillars a secure platform is built on, five steps to put them into practice, and a checklist for evaluating enterprise video hosting.
Video streaming is no longer a luxury for the modern enterprise. It is a necessity. From corporate announcements to onboarding, employees stream live and on-demand video every day, and that makes it a central part of the digital workplace. However, as more enterprises continue to migrate to hybrid work models, many of them have failed to adapt their security infrastructure to meet evolving needs, potentially leaving their sensitive live streams exposed to risk.
Let’s take a look at the importance of secure video streaming to today’s hybrid enterprises and what you can do to better protect your online video assets.
Why Enterprise Video Needs Its Own Security Model
Video sits at the heart of hybrid work. Onboarding, training, company announcements, all-hands meetings, and customer support now happen over live broadcasts and on-demand recordings, and a large enterprise can hold thousands of them. Many organizations still store that video across disconnected tools rather than a centralized video hosting platform, which is where the security gaps begin. An all-in-one business video platform gives IT one place to capture, manage, and distribute video with the same controls applied to every file. For the delivery side of the problem, see our video streaming security best practices.
How Security Requirements Shape Your Business Video Platform Choice
When selecting a video hosting platform for your organization, security considerations are paramount. That’s even more true in today’s digital landscape, where data breaches and unauthorized access affect the increasing number of businesses relying on online infrastructure. Your security requirements will ultimately determine the preventative measures you need for your online video platform.
For instance, Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), a symmetric encryption algorithm, will encrypt your video content during transmission and storage, thus preventing malicious actors from intercepting it. A secure streaming protocol can also affect your security profile, which is why we make sure all of our services run through HTTPS and TLS.
Encryption, DRM, Watermarking, and Signed URLs: What Each Control Protects
Encryption, DRM, watermarking, and signed URLs are often listed together, but each one closes a different gap.
Encryption (AES-256 at rest, TLS in transit) protects the file and the connection. It does not stop an authorized viewer from forwarding a link.
Signed URLs and token-based authentication expire a playback link after a set time and tie it to the viewer’s session, so a forwarded link fails and a password alone is never the only gate.
Digital rights management (DRM) controls playback on approved devices and blocks downloads and screen capture in supported players. It matters most for premium or externally distributed content.
Viewer watermarking overlays the viewer’s name or email on the stream, which deters screen recording of executive broadcasts, earnings previews, and product launches.
Delivery inside the network is the last piece. An enterprise content delivery network (eCDN) caches a stream inside each office so thousands of employees can watch at once without loosening access controls to make it scale.
Security Challenges Enterprises Face Beyond Encryption and Digital Rights Management
Most video platforms were not designed with data protection at the forefront, and they lack the security features and governance protocols needed to protect enterprise video. And that doesn’t even cover the issues that may arise from using a live streaming platform tailored toward individual content creators for confidential material.
That means enterprises face the possibility of sensitive data leaking to external parties, exposing the enterprise to severe financial, reputational, and operational risk. Moreover, at enterprises that don’t use a secure video hosting platform, employees often store content in external locations, creating further data loss exposure.
Some of the specific risks enterprises face include:
- Prerecorded earnings broadcasts can leak to the public, causing shares to take a serious hit and significant revenue opportunities to be missed.
- Product launches might reach the public earlier than planned, negating all product launch efforts and giving other companies a serious competitive advantage.
- Leaked corporate acquisition news can undermine corporate marketing strategies and seriously dampen announcement day performance.
Security risks exist across the entire enterprise video life cycle. Employees might record video that includes sensitive company data and then share it to public networks and channels beyond the reach of your security team. Even for live streaming broadcasts and on-demand video hosted on internal storage solutions, malicious actors might exploit unsecured networks to deploy ransomware, encrypt data, and exfiltrate sensitive information for financial gain.
When you invest in an enterprise video platform, it must have a comprehensive security feature set to protect data at every possible production stage and attack vector.
The Four Pillars of a Secure Online Video Platform
Enterprise video security is a multifaceted approach to video data and content protection that requires several layers of governance to control user access and safeguard sensitive data against the latest threats in your industry.
A good enterprise video platform should be built on the four following pillars:
- Access control: A secure platform lets administrators assign roles to individual employees, determining who can upload videos and, most importantly, who approves a video before it is added to the system. A secure platform should also give admins control over which individuals have permission to access each asset, ensuring only the people who need to use specific videos can view their contents.
- Governance: An enterprise’s security system is only as good as its ability to enforce regulations and compliance rules. A robust governance layer ensures the system is being used as it was designed. This pillar also includes the creation of approvals workflows to ensure the appropriate individuals are assigned to each authorization, validation, and compliance step for all video content. Furthermore, governance protocols enable enterprises to enforce retention policies, ensuring sensitive videos are kept (or removed, depending on the content) after a specified period of time.
- Organization: A core part of a secure enterprise video platform is the ability to organize video content according to the needs and requirements of different teams. Channels features give teams the ability to share videos only with those employees they want viewing them, instead of sharing them across the entire company. Channels should be designed with high-security standards to give teams the freedom to collaborate, share ideas, and create value.
- Discovery: Employees have gotten used to the fast, convenient, and personalized video that consumer streaming services like Netflix and Hulu offer, and many of them expect the same type of experience from their company software. The final pillar of a secure video streaming platform ensures employees are equipped with searchability, recommendation, sharing, and other features to enable seamless access to enterprise video content.
Rules To Embed in a Secure Video Streaming Platform
Follow these five steps to enhance your video content and streaming security, improving video experiences and mitigating possible risk:
- Communicate early and often with the senior leadership team
It’s important to involve senior leaders in all conversations around video content and video streaming security. They are best positioned to identify the most sensitive information while also helping to clarify which jobs and management levels require access to specific information. This will help ensure that your security infrastructure is informed by the actual priorities and sensitivities of your enterprise. - Identify who needs access to what content Your enterprise is a bustling organization of thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of employees. Not all of them require access to all video content. Take time to collaborate with senior leaders and other department heads to make complete lists that name the individuals who require access to specific pieces of sensitive video. This will help inform the creation of permissions when it comes time to implement access controls.
- Be as detailed as possible
The right enterprise video platform allows you to implement access controls at a highly granular level. You can limit access to video content to ensure unauthorized viewers who do not need certain videos to complete their job functions are unable to consume that content. Additionally, you can place time restrictions on their access privileges or limit video access to further reduce possible exposure to risk. - Secure physical recording locations to prevent data leakage
Make sure all physical recording locations are free of any information that could lead to data leakage or risk. Background images and slide decks should be properly vetted to prevent sensitive information from leaking. Of course, governance controls will play a key role here, too. Authorized users should carefully vet all video content created in your network to ensure users aren’t inadvertently sharing sensitive enterprise (or consumer) information to both your internal and, worse, your external networks. - Stay ahead of the latest cybersecurity trends
Cybercriminals are constantly fine-tuning their hacking capabilities, meaning enterprises have to similarly evolve to stay ahead of threats and prevent data breaches. The right online video platform will be built according to the industry’s highest security standards, ensuring your sensitive video content stays safe behind a comprehensive security infrastructure that is constantly updated to meet emerging threats.
Secure Enterprise Video Hosting and Streaming Checklist
Use these controls to evaluate any enterprise video hosting vendor. Vbrick’s enterprise video platform includes each of them; the security and governance data sheet has the detail.
- Single sign-on: SSO capabilities enable users to easily access Vbrick enterprise video tools using a single set of login credentials. Not only does this streamline repetitive tasks and enhance the user experience, but it also improves password protection while simplifying user authentication.
- Role-based security: Vbrick enables system admins to create workflows and assign specific roles and responsibilities to authorized individuals. This lets them gain greater control over which users have the ability to create videos, manage channels, and distribute content either internally or publicly. It also gives them an approval layer to ensure all content is compliant prior to delivery.
- Comprehensive video encryption: Vbrick encrypts and centralizes every video to protect it from internal and external threats. Whether the video is in storage or moving within your network (and beyond), Vbrick’s AES encryption prevents malicious actors from accessing and stealing video content.
- Access controls: Vbrick’s access controls limit who can create, edit, and distribute video. Administrators can also block specific viewers from specific videos, giving the enterprise fine-grained control over sensitive recordings.
- Ransomware protection: Compliance and infrastructure security: The platform is built to recognized security standards. Vbrick is FedRAMP Certified, SOC 2 Type II audited, and GDPR compliant, and Vbrick is the industry’s only FedRAMP-certified enterprise video platform. That infrastructure, combined with the encryption and access controls above, is what protects a video library against ransomware and data exfiltration.
- User activity auditing: Administrators see every change made to every stream or webcast in the library, including what changed and which user changed it. This helps them pinpoint compliance issues when they arise and undo possible unwanted changes.
- Machine learning-based data loss prevention: Vbrick’s tools are equipped with machine learning (ML) technologies that automate critical components of your data loss prevention (DLP) protocols. ML tools gather information based on industry trends and attack profiles to build a more sophisticated understanding of your level of risk and better protect against security breaches.
Vbrick’s secure video streaming platform is built for regulated and security-conscious enterprises. If you are comparing vendors, our corporate video platform comparison is a good next read, or schedule a demo to walk through these controls with our team.