At the recent 11th annual FOKUS Media Web Symposium hosted by the prestigious Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems in Berlin, two experts from Verimatrix took the stage to shine a spotlight on the existential threat video piracy poses to the over-the-top (OTT) streaming industry. 

Their insights underscored that as premium video consumption shifts to streaming platforms, robust anti-piracy and cybersecurity measures are critical for protecting this booming business model.

Building robust security measures for OTT providers

Klaus Schenk, SVP of Security and Threat Research at Verimatrix, kicked things off with his talk titled “Merging Cybersecurity and Content Protection in OTT.” As cybersecurity attacks against media services grow in volume and sophistication each year, Klaus made a powerful case that robust cybersecurity measures are equally vital for OTT providers beyond just classical means of content protection, such as applying DRM and using tokenization. 

“Cybersecurity measures close the attack vectors that pirates are abusing today. For an OTT business, today’s combination of cyberattacks and means of classical piracy means total service outages, uncontrolled costs by CDN leeching, loss of content rights, and data breaches exposing customer and partner records,” Klaus explained. “In today’s hyper-connected world, you simply can’t have an effective content security strategy without tightly integrating robust cybersecurity as well.”

Using real-world breach examples from media companies, Klaus walked through the types of attacks pirates use against OTT providers, like different methods of key theft and content ripping. He outlined how means of cybersecurity like app protection fit perfectly to prevent these attacks and monitor attempts to attack. Explicitly, he went through the benefits of app monitoring, API protection, protection against debugging, hooking, tampering, MitM attacks, and obfuscation. 

Klaus also explained how DRMs, app protection, app monitoring, watermarking, and tokenization build a bundle that is much more robust than the solutions usually deployed today. He addressed the need for effort-free integration of such a solution and gave real-life examples of cost savings for OTT providers.

“Almost every OTT provider needs to use software-based DRMs to reach their audience. Most of the industry has almost given up fighting piracy, claiming ‘everyone’s hacked’. But adding means of cybersecurity not only addresses the problem of piracy but also addresses growing threats to the OTT providers like CDN leeching and breakdown of service during prime events.”

Addressing the staggering cost of streaming piracy

Following Klaus’ talk was Maria Malinkowitsch, Director of Product Management at Verimatrix, who presented on “Video Piracy – A Lost Battle? Piracy in OTT and how to combat it.” Drawing from her extensive product experience in video security, Maria walked the audience of over 200 industry experts through the staggering scope of today’s piracy problem.

“The numbers are really eye-opening,” Maria stated as she displayed statistics highlighting that streaming piracy costs the US media industry alone an estimated $51 billion per year in lost revenue. “And keep in mind, that’s just the legal perspective; it doesn’t even account for things like content leaks prior to release that can completely undermine the business model for creators and distributors.”

Maria went on to outline the sophisticated pirate ecosystems that have emerged, where pirated streams and illegal IPTV services are openly marketed and monetized at industrial scales across the open internet. Leveraging examples pulled from the dark web and underground piracy forums, she illustrated how pirates are becoming increasingly organized and emboldened.

The good news, according to Maria, is that there are effective technical countermeasures for disrupting pirate services and recovering revenue. Multi-DRM content protection, forensic watermarking, app shielding, and AI-assisted monitoring and detection techniques were highlighted as crucial pillars of a comprehensive anti-piracy strategy. “But it requires a proactive, multi-layered approach,” she emphasized. “Security can’t just be an afterthought; it needs to be baked into every phase of the video workflow.”

Raising awareness of the growing piracy threat

The talks by Maria and Klaus were extremely well received by the FOKUS Media Symposium audience. As one attendee remarked, “I was absolutely not aware of piracy being that big of a threat; it’s alarming how organized these pirate operations have become.” Others commented on how the two presentations effectively made the case that anti-piracy and cybersecurity must be top priorities for any OTT service’s technology roadmap.

Indeed, raising this awareness was one of the key objectives for Maria and Klaus in speaking at the event. “Creating more education around the true scale and impact of piracy is crucial,” Maria stated after her talk. “Only when leaders across the OTT industry fully understand the grave threat piracy poses can we get proper focus and investment in combating it.”

Klaus echoed this sentiment, adding, “Piracy isn’t just an anti-content protection issue; it’s an overall anti-business issue that can completely derail an OTT provider through lost revenue, loss of service, uncontrolled costs due to CDN leeching, brand damage, legal exposure, and cyber risks. We can’t let these pirate operations undermine the entire future of streaming media.”

Measuring the impact of CDN leeching

CDN leeching, the unauthorized distribution and use of content from content delivery networks, is a major issue plaguing the streaming video industry. It is estimated that a staggering 40% to 50% of all high-demand content in Europe, such as live sports broadcasts, is being illegally redistributed to pirate customers by leechers. 

Unfortunately, most customers do not have the ability to accurately measure the true size and scope of the CDN leeching problem impacting their businesses. Often, customers only realize the problem if they run out of CDN capacity, due to privacy. This piracy not only leads to significant revenue losses but also undermines the entire streaming model if left unchecked. 

Implementing effective anti-piracy measures and monitoring capabilities is critical for content owners and distributors to identify leeching activities and protect their premium content from unauthorized redistribution.

As OTT rises to become the dominant distribution model for premium video content, the insights Maria and Klaus shared at the FOKUS symposium represent a wake-up call. While the battle against piracy is clearly an uphill fight, it’s one the streaming industry can’t afford to lose. By getting smarter about implementing multi-layered security measures from the ground up, OTT services have a path to disrupt piracy and create sustainable business models for success.

Plans are already underway for Maria and Klaus to participate in next year’s FOKUS Media Web Symposium. As the streaming wars heat up, their expert voices will continue to be vital for equipping the industry with the strategies and tools to fend off piracy’s existential threat.