Akamai Takes Online Video and Security to the Edge at IBC 2019

At IBC 2019, stand 1.D35, Akamai (NASDAQ: AKAM), the intelligent edge platform for securing and delivering digital experiences, will showcase solutions that can support OTT operators’ revenue goals, manage viewers and secure valuable content and services against evolving piracy and cyber threats. These solutions are designed to help operators meet the performance and security requirements demanded by today’s audiences and a multi-faceted threat landscape.

Reaching new heights of video quality across every stream

With the OTT market advancing, operators want to deliver a consistent, high-quality experience, particularly for the growing audience accessing content on large screen TVs. Enhancements to Akamai’s flagship streaming service, Adaptive Media Delivery, are designed to address operators’ needs through a range of new innovations:

• Quick-Retry intelligently detects any signs of bottlenecks along internet delivery routes and finds alternative connection paths, helping to ensure streams don’t drop during playback.
• Segment Pre-fetch prepositions anticipated video segments at the edge during playback, resulting in faster video start-up times and lower rebuffering rates. Prefetch is currently available with Akamai Media Services Live 4 and Azure Media Services acting as the origin/packager.
• Use Case Optimisations builds on Akamai’s 21 years of experience in video delivery with a series of optimised delivery configurations. This helps OTT operators to fine tune their configuration with selected tried-and-tested settings that map to live or on-demand use cases.

Supporting Commercial Goals

Akamai’s mPulse and Identity Cloud solutions can give OTT operators a competitive edge and help boost commercial success by providing deep performance analysis of apps and OTT services and enabling secure management of audience data.

• mPulse helps operators track, analyse and understand the impact of their OTT apps and services on their commercial success. Using advanced machine learning, mPulse gives content providers a granular view of performance data, including visibility into how their apps are performing on different devices or under varying network conditions.
• Additionally, operators can use Akamai’s Identity Cloud to capture, identify and securely manage viewer information and privacy permutations to drive more personalised viewing experiences or advanced programmatic advertising strategies.

Content, Application and Infrastructure Protection

Media companies are among the organisations most targeted by cyber-attackers, with threat actors looking to capture viewer data, hijack and cripple services, or steal critical media assets or information. Akamai is announcing several security innovations at IBC that protect content, customer data and the enterprise.

• Watermarking – Scalable watermarking support from Akamai, pre-integrated with several leading third-party providers, makes it easier to label content so that it becomes identifiable in the event of theft, allowing operators to more simply trace pirated content back to the source.
• Access Revocation – This offers OTT operators control over individual viewing sessions in order to prevent users from illicitly sharing video streams.
• Customer Identity Management – Akamai Identity Cloud helps OTT operators to securely hold viewer identity data separate from their own network, helping them remain compliant with regulations such as GDPR.
• Enterprise and Web Security – Akamai will showcase its Enterprise Threat Protector solution at IBC, part of its broad portfolio of security solutions to protect against crimes from ransomware to credential stuffing.

Cyber Security Forum

Akamai is also continuing its sponsorship of the Cyber Security Forum at IBC on Thursday, September 12th. Bringing together CTOs, CISOs and CIOs, this year’s programme will focus on protecting the content supply chain as well as exploring the latest innovations in AI, cloud asset protection and the increasing threats associated with IoT security.

As part of the forum, Akamai Editorial Director and Security Researcher Martin McKeay will Join DAZN Group CISO Jaspal Jandu in presenting “All Roads Lead to Fraud.” The presentation will examine the roles that DDoS, credential stuffing, phishing and application attacks play in defrauding OTT operators, merchants and banks.

Visual Cloud Conference

Akamai is participating in the first Visual Cloud Conference on Friday, 13 September, presented by IBC and Intel. The conference features panels and demonstrations intended to foster industry conversation around the future of streaming media. Will Law, Akamai Chief Architect for Media Cloud Engineering, is speaking on the conference panel, “Are you ready for intelligent visual experiences?” from 15:30-16:15. Akamai is also collaborating with Intel and several other technical partners to power and scale live streams from all Visual Cloud Conference panels in 8K 360 VR.