Anti-Piracy

NAB 2017: Machine Learning and Cyber Threats; Studios Close to Early VOD

LAS VEGAS — Murali Rao, global head of cybersecurity and risk consulting for Wipro, is sympathetic to those charged with mitigating cyber threats inside media and entertainment organizations. Too often they don’t have all the necessary data needed to find out what went wrong, or predict what can go wrong.

“It’s like asking a soldier to fight with two hands tied,” he said, speaking April 26 at the NAB Show’s Cybersecurity Pavilion.

That’s where machine learning and applied AI can be useful, or as Wipro likes to call it, a cohesive “Cognitive Cyber Defense” framework, one that can help enterprises maximize the investments they’ve made in cyber threat mitigation.

If cyber threat analysts are to understand the threats against their organizations, they need all the tools in front of them to actually analyze what’s confronting them, Rao said, and that includes gathering the necessary data from other associated stakeholders.

Rao shared statistics showing that enterprises can see, on average, 200,000 security events per day, and can find themselves spending more over 20,000 hours a year chasing false threats. Machine learning and AI can help narrow that down, by better predicting and identifying threats, Rao added.

In other cybersecurity and content protection news at NAB:

NexGuard

Studios have long toyed with the idea of premium VOD, releasing new films to the home just after their theatrical debut, and all indications show 2017 as the year it finally happens, according to Harrie Tholen, managing director of NexGuard.

Speaking at NAB, he said several major studios have picked launch dates for their premium VOD solutions, and NexGuard will be an integral part, protecting the content with its new File Delivery solution, which is designed to protect the transport of content to distributors and operators just before release.

“The studios believe that premium VOD will actually reduce piracy, because it’s being made available so quickly after theaters,” Tholen said. “The studios are being very top-of-mind with this.”

NexGuard File Delivery technology allows for watermarking during one-to-many file delivery, via a two-step watermarking process, one that enables the final watermarking step to be completed “on-the-fly.” And speed isn’t an issue, as the solution is integrated with IBM Aspera Faspex, working as an Aspera FASP-enabled plugin asset protection toolkit.

“We’ve booked quite a few evaluations because of the Aspera integration,” Tholen said. “It’s gaining traction.”

Fortium

Tony Miles, co-founder, CTO and COO of Fortium Technologies, couldn’t be more pleased with the response to the company’s upgrades to its MediaSeal encryption software solutions, which encrypts while you work.

Fortium partnered with IBM’s Aspera to integrate FASP transfer technology into the solution, allowing customers to start high-speed transfers that fold in Fortium’s MediaSeal to encrypt and protect before transit, before distributing packages of files at FASP speeds, and preventing unauthorized users from accessing the secured content.

“The integration has been well received, and the ability to encrypt from input to output is a big selling point,” Miles said.

Also at the NAB Show, Fortium shared the early results of its license agreement with Avid, which makes MediaSeal file encryption at-rest accessible to all of Avid post-production solution customers.

MarkLogic

Matt Turner, CTO of media and entertainment for MarkLogic, makes no bones about the fact he’s constantly got data on the brain. And at the 2017 NAB Show, it turned out to be the same thing on most everyone else’s mind as well.

“It’s been obvious to us for a while, but it’s nice to have that validation here at the show,” he said.

And with such a focus on data, so too have NAB attendees put a big focus on securing that data. MarkLogic is hyper focused today on emphasizing the value of data, and making it secure at every point in the supply chain.

“It’s not often on the day-to-day, top-of-mind list for people,” he added. The key, however, is making data secure, without sacrificing flexibility. “The data is there, and we’re making it actionable, and also secure.”