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(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