Content Security 2015 | Page 19

verimatrix_v 25/09/2015 17:27 Page 2 (CA), but this has evolved to embrace client device authentication alongside subscriber entitlement management. There has recently been a trend towards combining device authentication techniques with other pre-existing authentication information to enhance consumer security while keeping the experience as simple or ‘frictionless’ as possible for the user. When it comes to analytics in a multi-screen world, a frictionless identification scheme adds critical value as consumers divide their viewing time between different screens, as was pointed out by Carol Hinnant, Senior Vice President of National Network Sales, Advanced Media and Information Division at Rentrak, a leading provider of consumer viewership information. “That’s where the authentication is so valuable as it allows access to a stream of data from a unique user perspective,” said Hinnant. Adding value through security By being custodians of the decryption keys, security providers can also add value to network monitoring at the service delivery level. By being able to make sense of encrypted data, we can provide insights at the content, rather than IP packet level, which enables a more realistic appraisal of network performance from the perspective of both pay-TV provider and the end user. This, combined with the visibility of the client, means security providers are natural partners for network monitoring specialists such as IneoQuest, who analyses data more deeply while a user is in transit across the network. They can then analyse QoS from the subscriber’s perspective, making it easier to determine the optimal next action. Security providers can also provide new insights from the head-end, which may not typically have a clear sight of each subscriber’s activity, but is a good place for obtaining a broad higher level view across an operator’s different target platforms. We can see entitlement data at the head-end to identify device types at this higher level, with the data anonymised so that it cannot easily be traced back to individuals. However, it is perhaps at the client level where security vendors have the greatest contribution to make through their intimate relationship with multiple devices. Operators with software-based and IP-enabled solutions are best placed because these are far more flexible and can be extended to multiple screens and protect all the devices from which analytics data may be collected. Under IP multicast, the same content is replicated at nodes serving more than one user downstream, which means operators, until now, have had to deploy clientside probes to detect user interactions with the content. Through their position on the client device, security providers can provide this detailed information without the need to deploy probes. Operators can determine