How to Secure Video Streaming for Your Enterprise

Video is no longer a luxury for the modern enterprise — it’s a necessity. Whether it’s corporate announcements or onboarding training, employees are consuming and streaming video, making this form of communication a central component of today’s digital workplaces. 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 video content 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.

Video is at the heart of the hybrid work model, and today’s enterprises now have hundreds — if not thousands — of pieces of video content floating throughout their environments. Onboarding, training, company announcements, ordinary meetings, and quick catch-ups all happen over live video, video stream, on-demand video, and other video formats.

However, many enterprises don’t have the infrastructure in place to make that video content accessible, usually storing it in disparate and often unsecured locations. An enterprise video platform can provide an all-in-one solution to centralize the capture, management, and distribution of all video content.

Enterprise video security challenges

Despite their emerging importance, most enterprise video platforms were not designed with data protection at the forefront, and they lack the security feature set and governance protocols needed to protect enterprise video content. That means enterprises face the possibility of sensitive data leaking to external parties, exposing the enterprise to serious financial, reputational, and operational risk. Moreover, at enterprises that don’t have proactive plans to keep their video content secure, 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 create video content that includes sensitive enterprise data before distributing it to public networks and channels where it is beyond the purview of your internal security team. Even for live streaming broadcasts and on-demand video hosted on internal networks, 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’s critical it has a comprehensive security feature set needed to protect data at every possible production stage and attack vector.

• Access control: A secure enterprise video platform enables system administrators to assign roles to individual employees, which will determine who has permission to upload videos and — perhaps most importantly — who needs to approve videos that are 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 certain videos are able to 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. Further, 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 the same 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 have, and many of them expect the same type of experience on 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.

Steps to securing your video streaming experience

Follow these five steps to enhance your video content and streaming security to improve video experiences and mitigate possible risk:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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 content. Additionally, you can place time restrictions on their access privileges, placing restrictions on video access that further limit possible exposure to risk.
4. Secure physical recording locations to prevent data leakage
   Make sure that 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.
5. Stay ahead of the latest cybersecurity trends
   Cyber criminals are constantly fine-tuning their hacking capabilities, meaning enterprises have to similarly evolve to stay ahead of threats and prevent data breaches. The right enterprise video platform will be built according to the industry’s highest security standards, ensuring your sensitive video content stays safe behind a robust, comprehensive security infrastructure that is constantly updated to meet emerging threats.

The core video platform security features

Vbrick’s enterprise video platform is equipped with a robust set of security features to maximize performance and enhance online video experiences. These features include:

• 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 to 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 all video content to protect it from harmful internal and external actors. Whether the video is in storage or moving within your network (and beyond), Vbrick’s video encryption software prevents malicious actors from accessing and stealing video content.
• Access controls: Vbrick’s access controls enable users to limit unauthorized access to video content creation, manipulation, and distribution. Users can also flag and block unauthorized viewers from consuming specific videos, giving enterprises more control over the internal consumption of sensitive video content.
• Ransomware protection: Our enterprise video platform is built according to the industry’s highest security standards. In addition to being SOC 2 audited and GDPR compliant, Vbrick has the only FedRamp-certified enterprise video platform on the market. We provide the security infrastructure needed to facilitate video content protection against harmful ransomware threats, preserving data integrity and privacy.
• User activity auditing: System admins gain complete oversight of all changes made to every video stream or webcast contained in their video content library, including the information that was changed and which user initiated the change. 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 robust suite of enterprise video solutions are designed for the video needs of today’s enterprise. Reach out to our team today to schedule a demo.