SAN JOSE, Calif.—Harmonic has announced that its VOS360 Media SaaS and VOS360 Ad SaaS are now qualified on Akamai cloud. The qualification provides Harmonic customers with greater efficiency for the deployment of playout, broadcast and video streaming workflows, Harmonic explained.

In addition, Harmonic announced that VOS360 Media SaaS will power the upcoming Akamai Media Services Live 5, a comprehensive suite of solutions for live event broadcasting and linear streaming. Harmonic is an independent software vendor that is part of the Akamai Qualified Compute Partner Program.

Harmonic will demonstrate its cloud solutions at the 2025 NAB Show, April 6-9, in Las Vegas at booth W2821.

"The collaboration with Harmonic allows us to bring a host of cloud computing, security and content delivery capabilities to media and entertainment companies worldwide," said Dan Lawrence, vice president, cloud computing at Akamai. "Utilizing Harmonic's VOS360 SaaS solutions on Akamai Cloud, media companies are afforded more control over their workflows, will have the ability to streamline viewing experiences, and can unlock new avenues for business growth and reduced operational costs."

Harmonic's VOS360 Media SaaS is designed to simplify all stages of media processing and delivery for premium video streaming and broadcast services. VOS360 Ad SaaS provides a complete workflow for personalized full-screen and in-stream ad delivery.

The end-to-end SaaS solutions leverage the reliable, secure and massively distributed edge and cloud platform from Akamai to provide an outstanding viewing experience. By powering the upcoming Akamai Media Services Live 5, Harmonic's VOS360 Media will enable a high-quality viewing experience for 24/7 live linear services, reliably and at scale.

"Media companies can now fully benefit from the unparalleled agility, resiliency, security and scalability offered by our award-winning media processing and delivery solutions on leading cloud platforms, including Akamai Cloud," said Gil Rudge, senior vice president, products and Americas sales, video business at Harmonic. "This collaboration is yet another example of Harmonic's powerful partnerships that are empowering media companies to accelerate service deployment on major cloud platforms and open doors to revenue-generating use cases as they execute their unique cloud strategies."

Further information is available at www.harmonicinc.com.

AUSTIN, Texas—Media Excel today announced a strategic collaboration with Akamai aimed at delivering video processing capabilities. 

A participant in the Akamai Qualified Compute Partner (QCP) Program, Media Excel’s HERO encoders and transcoders are now optimized to achieve significantly increased density on Akamai’s cloud-based GPU instances. This allows Media Excel to deliver improved performance that enables content providers to process more video streams at the same time without compromising quality, Media Excel said.

The GPU instances also enable the low-cost deployment of AI-based encoding on HERO, which can lower the price of bandwidth for users, it said.

“Akamai’s GPU-enabled cloud instances provide the perfect platform for our DIVA-enabled encoding technology,” said Media Excel CEO Narayanan Rajan. “By optimizing the use of both CPU and GPU resources, we can push the boundaries of video processing, offering our customers superior results while minimizing their TCO [total cost of ownership].”

The partnership introduces new cost efficiencies to the market. Leveraging the competitive pricing of Akamai’s GPU instances, Media Excel and Akamai are able to offer compelling per-channel pricing regardless of scale. This makes high-quality video processing accessible to a broader range of content owners and service providers, Media Excel said.

“Running Media Excel’s high-density video processing solutions on Akamai helps give media companies the control over their workflows that they’re asking for,” said Dan Lawrence, vice president of cloud computing at Akamai. “Together, we’re helping to make high-performance video encoding, transcoding, more affordable at a global scale.”

More information is available on the Media Excel and Akamai websites.

DENVER—Bitmovin has launched its Live Encoder running on the Akamai Cloud Computing, optimizing live streaming and reducing total streaming costs by up to 90%, and announced plans to show the combination at the 2024 NAB Show, April 13-17, the company said.

Immediately available, the combination reduces data transfer out (DTO) costs, leveraging the performance of the Bitmovin encoder and Akamai’s distributed cloud platform, Bitmovin said.

“Bitmovin can help its live-streaming customers deliver higher-quality viewing experiences and reduce and better control costs by running Live Encoder on Akamai Cloud Computing,” said Dan Lawrence, vice president of cloud computing at Akamai.

“Placing and executing Live Encoder’s critical compute functions closer to end users can realize lower latency streaming while maintaining the high quality of service that consumers have come to expect and demand from streaming providers. It can also help dramatically reduce DTO fees in many cases. Collectively, we believe this meets the industry’s desire to continue raising the standards of live streaming, provide lower and more predictable operational costs, and more opportunities to monetize content.”

With an intuitive user interface, Bitmovin’s Live Encoder simplifies setup of live streams. Its robust API offers developers complete control over all aspects of the encoding pipeline, the company said.

Live Encoder is also pre-integrated with Akamai Media Services Live to support live-to-VOD and live clipping, which is part of Akamai Connected Cloud and enables secure and efficient streaming at massive scale across Akamai’s global content delivery network (CDN), it said.

Those who run Bitmovin’s Live Encoder on Akamai will also benefit from pre-integrated third-party solutions for their video streaming workflows, including Videon's LiveEdge contribution encoders; Grass Valley’s Agile Media Processing Platform (AMPP) for live production; Zixi for secure transport and ingest; EZDRM for multi-DRM and content encryption; and Yospace for Server-side Ad Insertion (SSAI), it said.

“Our Live Encoder elevates live streaming, eliminating sub-par image and audio quality so audiences can enjoy truly immersive live experiences,” said Stefan Lederer, CEO and co-founder of Bitmovin.

More information is available on the Bitmovin website and Akamai websites.

See Bitmovin in NAB Show booth W3013.

See Akamai in NAB Show booth W235LMR.

The media and entertainment business is built on what it offers its viewers: programming, sports, news and other live events. While language purists may balk at the current use of the word “assets” instead of “programs,” it does convey the value of the material—both creative and commercial—shown on TV channels and streaming services. They are valuable commodities and have always needed to be protected. Unfortunately, the move to file-based production, with everything on computer servers and network or cloud access, has left assets—and their owners—extremely vulnerable.

This was starkly illustrated by the 2014 hack of files and data from Sony Pictures, which included staff details, emails, corporate information and copies of at-the-time unreleased films. Calls for heightened security in the aftermath of the breach ultimately led to the creation in 2018 of the Trusted Partner Network (TPN) by the Motion Picture Association (MPA) and the Content Delivery and Security Association (CDSA), with the MPA taking full control of TPN in 2021.

Early Moves
The MPA issued its first best practice guidelines for content security in 2009, in collaboration with member companies and consultancy Deloitte. Updates and revisions followed between 2011 and 2018, with authorship moving exclusively to the MPA and its membership.

Deloitte published its own report on the subject in 2018, highlighting the digital transformation of content in all its forms. Among its recommendations for securing material were digital fingerprinting, encryption, blockchain (a digital ledger for recording transactions and events), watermarking and plugging the “analog hole,” where programs are copied from legacy sources.

John Footen, managing director of Deloitte Consulting, acknowledges that the situation continues to evolve but says new technologies are now being used with established practices to further tighten security.

“Automation can reduce the effort to maintain a consistent security posture in large-scale systems and to recover after an attack,” he explains. “We’re also seeing greater integration of media technology with enterprise security systems. More products can work with single sign-on in zero-trust environments, for example. At Deloitte, we’re applying AI for cyber defense, not only for well-established uses such as detecting anomalous behavior and interdicting threats but also for assessment and visualization.”

The changing nature of the threat— hackers developing new viruses and ways of infiltrating systems—calls for content owners to be ever vigilant. This is reflected in the MPA/TPN Best Practice Guidelines, which have been updated on an annual basis (sometimes twice in a year) since 2018. The most recent revision appeared in August this year, with new guidance on working from home and remote access to data centers, plus minor updates to cloud specific controls.

The recommendations from Crystal Pham, vice president of operations and product management for TPN are fairly universal no matter the process: Ensuring that content owners and facilities have secure connections— including not logging into applications from unsecured networks; keeping applications updated and patched; using strong passwords and authentication mechanisms; not sharing accounts or credentials; always installing applications from trusted sources; and adhering to MPA Best Practices, as well as completing an annual TPN assessment.

Pham characterizes the security issue in M&E as “always evolving” and can be influenced by new technologies, the shortening of  release windows and emerging threats. 

“Change is a constant,” she says. “I do think there’s more awareness about security, with better understanding of the constant change and the need to get ahead of it when possible. I believe it’s becoming more embedded in the process of creating, distributing and consuming content. It’s also becoming more ingrained in our culture.”

New Methods Needed
The ever-shifting landscape is summed up by Asaf Ashkenazi, chief executive of Verimatrix, who observes that as technology advances, so do the techniques used by pirates to illegally obtain, distribute and monetize content.

“DRM and other traditional security methods are no longer as effective against today’s savvy hackers,” he says. “New real-time detection and prevention systems that are layered on traditional protection methods are needed to combat modern piracy efforts—especially those that leverage AI/ML and cloud infrastructure to exploit at scale.”

To counter such threats, Verimatrix has developed Streamkeeper, which combines multi-DRM, forensic watermarking and “Counterspy,” which Ashkenazi describes as a “motion sensor” or “alarm” that detects piracy as it happens. “The goal, however, should not be to completely eliminate piracy but to disrupt the pirates’ business models,” he comments. “By increasing costs beyond potential profits, the motivation for piracy diminishes. Real-time detection, prevention and rapid response are key.”

Among the ways of disrupting the activities of pirates is to track down purloined programming to the sites where it is being offered illegally and shut them down. Another company providing such monitoring enforcement services is Friend MTS, which does this using both fingerprinting and watermarking technologies. 

“A customer will give us a clean reference feed of their playout and we fingerprint that,” explains Nik Forman, vice president of marketing for the U.K.-based company. “This allows us to uniquely identify that clip of video. If the monitoring systems— which are all automated and crawling the web—then find a suspicious web site is playing that content, we fingerprint it so we can compare them. 

“If they match, we know it is an illicit player and the client can send an enforcement notice or a takedown order,” Forman continues. “If they also take our watermarking services, the content is marked invisibly and basically sits like a QR code in the actual video. When we find the illicit content and we identify it, we match it with a fingerprint and can then say it is one of our watermarks and we extract that payload of subscriber information.”

‘Never Trust, Always Verify’
While the Sony hack made the M&E sector painfully aware of its vulnerabilities, the threats have only increased since then due to otherwise innocent technological developments. The threat landscape has evolved with emergent technologies such as the Internet of Things, 5G connectivity and advanced generative AI capabilities, according to Eric Elbaz, principal strategic engagement manager at Akamai.

“We’ve also seen state-sponsored attacks become more brazen,” he said. “Nation-state actors are believed to be behind some of the most sophisticated and persistent threats seen to date.”

This was the suspicion surrounding the attack on the supply chain of software company SolarWinds in 2020, while, as Elbaz points out, ransomware attacks have increased “dramatically.”

A recent example of this is the breach of MGM Resorts’ systems in Las Vegas, which reportedly cost the company approximately $100 million. But Elbaz does see progress in dealing with the threats: “On the defensive side, we’ve seen major strides being made across threat intelligence, a paradigm shift from ‘trust but verify’ to ‘never trust always verify’ architectures, which is zero-trust security. Deeper public-private sector collaboration and information sharing, as well as a catch up in privacy laws, regulations, and standards are also helping.”

The threat shows no signs of going away and future attacks are likely to be even more cunning and sophisticated. According to “Variety,” in 2022, hacking of popular entertainment content rose 18% YOY compared with 2021, with the U.S. having the largest share of film and TV demand (i.e., illicit streams, downloads and the like), with more than 13.5 billion visits to piracy sites.

But the tools to combat it are there and, when it comes down to it, the greatest weapons are probably vigilance and common sense. 

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—Akamai Technologies Inc. has announced that Ateme is the latest organization to join the Akamai Qualified Computing Partner Program. 

The Akamai Qualified Computing Partner Program is designed to make solution-based features that are interoperable with Akamai's cloud computing services easily accessible to Akamai customers. The services are provided by Akamai technology partners that complete a rigorous qualification process to ensure they are readily available to deploy and scale across the globally distributed Akamai Connected Cloud, Akamai explained. 

As an Akamai Qualified Computing Partner, Ateme will be able to offer Akamai customers end-to-end high-quality video-delivery solutions and greater choices in their digital transformation. The smooth, one-stop source facilitates cloud migration, as well as customers' search for a relevant Akamai-supported solution, the companies said. 

"We are honored to become a part of the Akamai Qualified Computing Partner Program," said Ricardo Minari, director of global partnerships at Ateme. "This partnership highlights Ateme's commitment to ensuring our customers deliver the highest quality of video content to global audiences, even during their ongoing digital transformation journeys."

With Ateme's high-quality video-delivery solution running on Akamai, joint customers can benefit from low latency and better throughput thanks to the power of Akamai Connected Cloud, Akamai's massively distributed edge and cloud platform, the companies explained. 

As a qualified computing partner, Ateme offers workloads that can be deployed with a range of origin options on Akamai, giving customers the flexibility to choose either a self-managed or an Akamai-managed origin. In addition, Ateme's compression efficiency combined with Akamai's cloud computing services' competitive data-transfer rates can help customers enjoy the cost benefits of reduced bandwidth and storage requirements, the companies said. 

"Akamai is pleased to make quality video compression and delivery easily available to Akamai customers through the Akamai Qualified Computing Partner Program," said Matt Berk, vice president of cloud computing at Akamai. "Pay TV operators and content providers are now able to captivate their audiences with high-quality video and scale it across Akamai Connected Cloud, the massively distributed platform for cloud computing, security, and content delivery."

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—Akamai has launched Akamai Connected Cloud, a massively distributed edge and cloud platform for cloud computing, security, and content delivery that keeps applications and experiences closer and threats farther away, the company said. 

Akamai also announced new strategic cloud computing services for developers to build, run, and secure highly performant workloads closer to wherever businesses and users connect online

These include three new enterprise-scale core cloud computing sites across the U.S. and Europe. Like Akamai’s existing 11 cloud computing sites, the new sites will plug into the Akamai backbone — connecting them to the most distributed edge network on the planet. The new sites, which are expected to be live by the end of Q2 2023, will contain all of the cloud computing services acquired from Linode, the developer-friendly cloud infrastructure provider Akamai acquired in 2022. These also become the template for 10 additional core sites that Akamai plans to roll out across the globe throughout the year. 

In addition to launching the new core sites, Akamai has identified more than 50 cities in which it plans to begin rolling out distributed sites this year, to bring basic cloud computing capabilities into difficult-to-reach locations currently underserved by traditional cloud providers. 

The company has also adopted a more aggressive approach to cloud egress pricing by bringing CDN-like economics to cloud data transfer. The new egress pricing model is designed to result in significantly discounted egress rates relative to the hyperscalers and alternative cloud providers, the company said.

Akamai has also said it is committed to new ISO, SOC 2, and HIPAA standards compliance, which the company says focuses on the security of its cloud computing services and customer data within, and allows customers to move workloads among Akamai and other public clouds. 

Also new is the Akamai Qualified Computing Partner Program which is designed to provide Akamai customers with solution-based services that are interoperable with Akamai Connected Cloud. The services will be provided by Akamai technology partners that complete a thorough qualification process, ensuring they are readily available to deploy and scale across the globally distributed platform, according to Akamai.. 

“We’re taking a fundamentally different approach to cloud computing — building on 25 years of experience scaling and securing the internet for the biggest companies in the world,” said Tom Leighton, Akamai’s Co-Founder and CEO. “Akamai is building the cloud the next decade needs.” 

In building out Akamai Connected Cloud, Akamai is adding core and distributed sites on top of the same underlying backbone that powers its edge network today— spanning more than 4,100 locations across 134 countries. More specifically, Akamai is placing compute, storage, database, and other services closer to large population, industry, and IT centers. 

The result, the company said, is designed to be a continuum of compute, from core to edge, enabling companies to more efficiently build, deploy, and secure performant workloads that require single-digit millisecond latency and global reach. Industries such as media, gaming, SaaS, retail, and government are examples where these requirements are in high demand today. 

“Akamai’s leadership position at the edge enables us to scale everything we touch: We scale content, putting digital experiences closer to users than anyone. We scale cybersecurity, keeping threats farther away from business and people. Our customers know us and trust us for this scale. Now we plan to scale cloud computing, to provide customers with better performance at a lower cost,”  Leighton added. 

Akamai Connected Cloud is headed up by Adam Karon, Chief Operating Officer and General Manager of Akamai’s Cloud Technology Group. In this role, he has led teams focused on enabling today’s leading media, gaming, and software companies to deliver the best possible experiences — at scale — to their customers on any device, anywhere, and helping carriers operate high-performing and cost-efficient networks. 

“Cloud is a stepping stone to solving larger business challenges,” said Karon. “Business leaders are looking to continue the momentum of digital transformation and stretch the boundaries of what’s possible for their organizations in an increasingly digital world. Our distributed scale is designed to deliver highly performant cloud computing everywhere our customers’ business connects online, empowering them with the speed, flexibility, performance, and connectivity they need to grow without compromise, innovate without friction, and delight customers without fail.” 

For more information, visit the Akamai cloud computing solutions page. 

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—Akamai Technologies, Inc. and NESN, the broadcast home of the Boston Red Sox and Boston Bruins, have announced that they are working together to live stream all 2022-23 Bruins home games and future Red Sox home games in 4K/HDR through the NESN 360 app. 

The first 4K/HDR live stream was the Bruins home opener on Saturday, October 15th, making NESN is the first regional sports network (RSN) in the United States to live stream Major League Baseball (MLB) and National Hockey League (NHL) games in 4K/HDR natively via a streaming app, the companies said. 

The partnership between NESN and Akamai is part of the significant investments that NESN has made to produce games at Boston’s TD Garden and Fenway Park in 4K/HDR. 

NESN is using Akamai Adaptive Media Delivery (AMD) to power 4K/HDR live streaming for the NESN 360 app. Built on the Akamai Intelligent Edge Platform, a network spanning more than 4,100 locations across 135 countries, AMD is optimized for adaptive bitrate (ABR) streaming to provide consistent, high-quality viewing across varying network types and connection speeds, Akamai reported. 

“We are so excited to bring 4K/HDR into New England homes on NESN 360,” said Ahmed Darwish, NESN’s chief marketing officer. this technology provides a rich, immersive experience for NESN 360 subscribers and those with access through their TV provider. Fan reaction when we piloted 4K/HDR during the Red Sox season was spectacular, and we look forward to wow’ing Boston sports fans this Bruins season.”

Users can watch the 4K/HDR streams on the NESN 360 app via direct subscription or by authenticating with their TV provider on an iPhone, Android, Apple TV, Fire TV and Google TV. 2023 Red Sox home games will be available in 4K/HDR on the NESN 360 app beginning in April. 

“Akamai has been a crucial partner in providing the streaming infrastructure that we need to deliver 4K/HDR,” said NESN’s vice president of technology, Kenny Elcock. “The NESN team broke new ground, testing around the clock, to produce and package live home games in native 4K/HDR. Akamai media delivery solutions helped get it all into viewers homes as fast as possible,” 

“NESN is proving that the technology to live stream 4K/HDR at scale and consumer demand for the content have both finally arrived,” added Will Law, chief architect, Edge Technology Group, Akamai. “Akamai is proud to partner with NESN in this cutting-edge streaming service and excited to help bring it to our hometown base of avid Boston sports fans.”

Adding 4K/HDR live streaming to the NESN 360 app is the latest in a long string of innovative “firsts” for NESN, the company said. 

With its introduction of NESN 360 earlier this year, the network was the first regional sports network (RSN) to offer a direct-to-consumer streaming service. During the 2022 baseball season, NESN became the first RSN to broadcast MLB games in native 4K/HDR when it announced availability of all Red Sox home games in the high-quality format on DIRECTV, Verizon Fios and fuboTV. Bruins home games on NESN will also be broadcast on 4K/HDR for DIRECTV, Verizon Fios, and fuboTV customers. In 2015, the network was the first RSN to fully automate studio production and the first to deliver all professional MLB and NHL games in HD.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—In a sign that internet traffic just keeps exploding, Akamai has set a new company record with web traffic delivered across its edge network peaking at 250 terabits per second (Tbps). 

A high-profile sporting event and major video game download were the primary drivers, Akamai reported in a blog post. 

By way of context, Akamai noted that at 250 Tbps would allow a user to download every feature film ever made in 37 seconds. “Of course, it would take 51 straight years of nonstop viewing to watch them all,” the blog post added. 

The 250Tbps milestone came barely 13 months after Akamai passed 200Tbps for the first time. In October of 2019, the company passed the 100 Tbps milestone.

When the company passed the 200 Tbps traffic record, it asked employees to submit idea of how to explain those mind boggling numbers. After reviewing many submissions, the judges selected the film analogy used here from Michal Janusinski, a senior infrastructure operations analyst based in the Akamai Krakow office.

It is now asking people for an appropriate analogy when they reach the 300Tbps milestone. Ideas can be submitted here. 

“Every feature film ever made” comparison was based on an IMDb search of all feature films released since January 1, 1860, with a minimum run time of 60 minutes (268,000). The company assumed an average run time of 100 minutes and approximate size of 4GB at full HD quality.

PHILADELPHIA & BIRMINGHAM, U.K.—Content protection provider Friend MTS has expanded its partnership with content delivery network Akamai to offer content owners, broadcasters and operators a new smart server-side A/B variant watermarking solution based on the former’s ASiD OTT Edge-switched technology and the latter’s Access Revocation solution, Friend MTS announced.

The expanded partnership gives Akamai customers access to a new way to watermark premium content with accelerated watermark extraction. Combined with Akamai’s Access Revocation solution, the solution provides immediate remediation of live and VOD content streams if piracy is detected.

“With Akamai as our long-term valued partner, we continue our important work of developing and deploying content protection technologies at scale that serve to proactively prevent content theft as the media industry increasingly faces highly sophisticated real-world piracy threats,” said Friend MTS CEO Jonathan Friend.

“Now with ASiD 4th Generation, we’re delighted to integrate ASiD OTT Edge-switched with Akamai’s Watermark Token system to offer maximum protection with ASiD’s end-to-end functionality for all operator and service provider distribution workflows.”

ASiD 4th Generation, along with the new ASiD OTT Edge-switched proprietary technology, works to secure high-value content and revenue across all types of broadcast and OTT devices, clients and apps, the company said.

Friend MTS’ watermarking technologies remain fully compliant with the MovieLabs Specification for Enhanced Content Protection. They enable the industry to prevent content theft and other business-affecting activities, such as credential or account sharing by revoking access to compromised accounts.

“Our latest collaboration with Friend MTS brings an expanded content protection offering for our joint customers, giving them the ability to rapidly terminate delivery of content to devices that have been identified as sources of piracy,” said Akamai Director of Media Product Marketing Ian Munford.

More information is available on the Friend MTS website.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—Akamai has announced it’s platform reached an internet traffic milestone last week, with its edge network delivering data at a rate of 200 terabits per second (Tbps). This tops the previous high Akamai shared from November 2020 of 181 Tbps.

Akamai says that a combination of a large sporting event (possible the March Madness basketball tournament), major video game downloads and several large software updates drove the peak in traffic.

“We’re often asked why it’s so important that Akamai have a network that’s as scalable as it is—and last week is a good example of the importance of our distributed network,” wrote Adam Karon, COO at Akamai, in a blog post.

“The scale and reach of the Akamai network is fundamental to facilitating good business and stopping bad actors without impacting end users’ experiences,” Karon added.

Traffic growth has been occurring rapidly for Akamai, as the company first hit 100 Tbps in October 2019.

LONDON—An event that may have gone unnoticed last December when the U.S. election was still dominating the news cycle, was the ratification of the “Protecting Lawful Streaming Act,” which makes stealing video streams a felony, to be treated the same as illegally distributing copyrighted TV and movies.

And not a moment too soon—Q1 2020 saw a fourfold year-on-year rise in credential stuffing attacks against the media industry, according to a study by Akamai, which reported approximately 100 million malicious login attempts per day.

LOCKING DOWN STREAMS

Clearly the pandemic has a role to play, since lockdowns ironically result in more breaches of streaming security as a result of higher demand. Two months into lockdown last year, Nielsen reported that Americans were streaming twice as much content as in 2019.

“Much of that traffic was driven by more people staying at home relying on streaming video for entertainment,” confirms Ian Munford, director of Media Product Marketing at Akamai. “In our '2020 State of the Internet/Credential Stuffing in the Media Industry' report, we noted a spike in malicious login attempts against European video service providers and broadcasters that coincided with early lockdowns in the region.

“While we can’t definitively state that the attempts were directly related to an increased demand for streaming, it’s certainly reasonable to draw at least some level of correlation between the two,” he continued. “Like many others, criminals were isolating at home as well, and likely had more inclination and time to devote to nefarious activities.”

Philip James, partner, privacy and security from law firm Eversheds Sutherland, concurs. “The appetite for entertainment remains high, and despite the pandemic, is supported by ease of access through mobile and tablets,” he said. “In addition, bandwidth and speed of streaming have increased, and on balance, have become proportionately better value.”

Add to this today’s trend for film companies to release movies online that would traditionally have been tentpole theatrical events, and the seas of piracy grow even choppier.

“The increasing proliferation of high-profile content, which would have ordinarily gone to theatrical release, is particularly attractive and some studios have decided to go straight to online stream rather than await theatrical release—with the exception of the Bond franchise, of course, which delayed its release of ‘No Time To Die’ twice as a result of the pandemic," James said. “One of the key reasons for awaiting theatrical release is likely to be security concerns around pirate copies of streamed content.”

Indeed, Warner Bros’ release of “Wonder Woman 1984” directly onto HBO Max made it the target of 10% of all illegal TV or movie downloads on the day it came out, according to piracy tracker TorrentFreak. Writing in Quartz, Adam Epstein estimates “at least $20 million in lost revenue for the studio—and likely much more in subsequent weeks.” This places film studios in a position TV broadcasters have been in for decades, fending off pirates as tenacious as any foe of Wonder Woman.

In 2021 Warner Bros is releasing all of its movies on HBO Max concurrently with their theatrical (and at the moment highly theoretical) release, leaving the company open to digital attacks and, depending on the appetite for the new "Space Jam" movie, losing millions in potential revenue.

SHIELDING CONTENT

How then do broadcasters protect their content from the increasing threat of piracy?

“Regardless of the scope, authentication and encryption are the keys,” said Wayne Pacena, director of engineering, Texas A&M University, KAMU FM & TV, adding that “the implementation is likely very different based upon the scope or context of what is being protected.”

For instance, as sports rights holders up their defense game, pirates respond with equally sophisticated lines of attack.

“During one particular sports tournament, Akamai anti-piracy specialists identified attack vectors changing on a daily and even hourly basis,” notes Munford. “It is for this reason that the means of protection against video piracy also needs to change. No longer is it possible to use one technology such as digital rights management or even watermarking as video pirates will find a way to circumnavigate the protection.

“Responsible broadcasters are now looking to build protection throughout their value chain and adopting a 'zero trust' posture,” Munford added. “In practice, this means stepping up their investigatory and legal activities but also complementing this work by preventing access to internal production systems, preventing credential abuse, protecting APIs in addition to investing in real-time monitoring and stream revocation technologies.” 

A SEACHANGE IN IP

ST 2110—the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers’ standard for video transport over IP—is designed to enable interoperability between different systems when transmitting uncompressed audio and video over an IP network. Pacena emphasizes the difference between this kind of managed private media infrastructure and the public internet, whose “maze of independent interconnected networks … is simply not an appropriate network choice in which to implement SMPTE ST 2110.”

By contrast, Pacena recommends a broadcaster’s IP network infrastructure employ a number of security measures or layers of protection, including “physical security, Ethernet switch port security, network (subnet) segmentation, packet filtering, access control, encryption and authentication.” A robust network is crucial to stopping the different forms of piracy increasingly jamming up digital space.

Such attacks are now liable to prosecution as felonies, a welcome step for anti-piracy practitioners but far from exhaustive according to Minal Modha, consumer research lead at Ampere Analysis, who noted the continuing threat to live sports.

“Sports is a good place to look when considering the battle against piracy,” Modha said. “Sport rights holders have been fighting it for years, have pumped large amounts of resources into it and are still facing big issues in tackling it. Pirates are using more advanced technology to stay ahead of the game and the vast number of streams available means that as soon as one is taken down, another replaces it almost instantly.

“With the huge numbers of pirate services available and how lucrative it is, unless the bill results in a large number of prosecutions, I’m not sure it’s going to be a further deterrent,” she added.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—Akamai has revealed live news streaming traffic on the day of the U.S. election was more than five-times greater than on an average day, and up by more than double the 7.5 Tbps peak the company observed during the 2016 Election night, which set a record at the time for the largest single news event that Akamai delivered.

Preliminary data shows live news streaming traffic peaked at approximately 18 Tbps on Akamai’s Intelligent Edge platform this year.

According to Harish Menon,—who is senior director, Global Broadcast Operations and Customer Events at Akamai—the spike in traffic between 2016 and 2020 was due to a number of factors, not least the interest around the world in the election.

“Also, more consumers than ever are streaming video, a trend that’s gained even greater momentum this year because of pandemic-related safety measures that are keeping people at home,” said Menon. “Finally, not only are more people streaming video; they’re enjoying higher levels of picture quality compared to four years ago, which is delivered at higher bitrates—meaning more data.”

Inversely, Nielsen reported that traditional TV ratings for election night coverage were down from 2016 numbers.

PARIS, DENVER, SINGAPORE & SAO PAULO—ATEME has announced that it is joining Akamai’s Media Technology Partner (MTP) program, where it will combine its technology with Akamai to help deliver high-quality video with Ultra low latency.

As part of MTP, ATEME’s video delivery technology—including encoding/transcoding and packaging platforms—will demonstrate technical integration, interoperability and alignment with Akamai’s media products. ATEME will prepare content with different bitrates and formats to make them available for Akamai media delivery, according to the companies.

Jon Alexander, senior director of Media Product Management at Akamai says that working with ATEME will simplify media processing from a cloud infrastructure, enabling customers to deploy low-latency live video solutions.

“We are delighted to partner with Akamai, a world leader in content delivery, and enable industry-leading low latency live video delivery,” said Remi Beaudouin, chief strategy officer at ATEME. “The combination of ATEME’s live encoding and compression and Akamai’s content delivery at the edge provides production ready sub five-second OTT video streaming.”

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—Will 2021 be the year of live streaming? Akamai is preparing like it is, as the global content delivery company expects an unprecedented surge in live streaming starting in late 2020 and continuing throughout 2021. To handle this, Akamai has announced new capabilities as part of its Akamai Platform designed to address the increase in live streaming.

Akamai points out that surges in live streaming are typical in even years, when many large sporting events often take place. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of these sporting events, including the Tokyo Olympics, were postponed to 2021. Since August, when many sports leagues have returned, Akamai has seen an increase in live streaming and expects that trend to continue.  

On top of the many major sporting events expected in 2021, the U.S. presidential election and inauguration in January could see significant instances of live streaming. Akamai is estimating that over the next year there could be an instance where 50 million people are concurrently streaming a single live event.

Akamai has written a blog post detailing its updates that are meant to help handle the challenges this level of live streaming could present.

One of these potential solutions is the new Akamai Developer APIs, which are designed to increase operational efficiency for organizations managing numerous live or linear streams. The APIs are meant to simplify the process of provisioning Akamai’s Media Services Live and Adaptive Media Delivery. An example includes the new live clipping feature for Media Service Live for the creation and archiving of highlights. Another new feature called Instant TV allows for users to define the beginning of a live program and enables viewers to use Restart TV functionality to start an in-progress event when they want.

Akamai has updated its Cloud Wrapper technology, optimizing connectivity between cloud infrastructures and the Akamai Intelligent Edge Platform, the company said. Cloud Wrapper now has multi-CDN support that enable it to operate as a central hub for delivery architecture.

Other new features from Akamai include added support for low-latency live streaming experiences, like low-latency HLS, and a new version of Akamai’s Access Revocation to combat fraudulent or shared streams. There are also more than 300,000 servers and nearly 1,500 networks around the world that contribute to Akamai’s Intelligent Edge Platform.

For more information, visit www.akamai.com.  

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—Broadcast TV and video are popular targets for criminals to launch credential stuffing attacks, according to a new report from Akamai that looked at the entire industry landscape.

Credential stuffing is the method by which criminals tap automated tools to use stolen login information to attempt to gain access to user accounts on other online sites, assuming that consumers use the same login and password for multiple services. The use of these stolen credentials can range from just allowing a non-subscriber to watch content via pirated streaming accounts or, more dangerously, stealing personal information.

While the media industry is a prime target in general—Akamai reports that 20% of the 88 billion credential stuffing attacks observed from January 2018-December 2019 were targeted at media companies—the video media sector is becoming increasingly targeted. There was a 63% increase year-over-year in attacks against the video sector, per Akamai. This includes a 630% increase against broadcast TV sites and a 208% increase against video sites. Video services saw a 98% increase in attacks; attacks against video platforms, however, dropped by 5%.

Reasons for this increase in attacks against broadcast TV and video sites includes the rise in on-demand media content in 2019, as well as the launch of new video services (Akamai doesn’t specifically name the services), the kind of things that credential stuffing attackers target, says Akamai.

The U.S. is the number one place for credential stuffing attacks against media companies, with a reported 1.1 billion in 2019.

The “Akamai 2020 State of the Internet/Credential Stuffing in Media Industry” report was delayed from its original April date to July because of COVID-19, but that delay allowed for Q1 2020 data to be added to the report. This included a spike in malicious login attempts against European video service providers.

“As long as we have usernames and passwords, we’re going to have criminals trying to compromise them and exploit valuable information,” Steve Ragan, Akamai security researcher and author of the report, explained. “Password sharing and recycling are easily the two largest contributing factors in credential stuffing attacks. While educating consumers on good credential hygiene is critical to combating these attacks, it’s up to businesses to deploy stronger authentication methods and identify the right mix of technology, policies and expertise that can help protect customers without adversely impacting the user experience.”

The complete Akamai report is available online. 

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—Akamai has announced a range of new steps aimed at protecting streamed broadcast content, including a provision giving rights holders the ability to execute immediate shutdowns of unauthorized streams or the source of piracy. 

In a blog posting, Akamai’s Chris Nicholson laid out the content protection strategy, including the immediate stream shutdowns. 

“Access Revocation can work on its own or integrated with either the Friend MTS or NAGRA watermarking solutions to be part of a formidable ‘prevent-discover-enforce’ content security posture,” wrote Nicholson.

Immediate halts to illegal streams are particularly important for live sports where the rights holder’s ability to make the most money from the event being covered normally is greatest during “a narrow window of competition,” he said.

Nicholson quoted from an interview by SportsPro with BeIN Media Group Chief Executive Yousef Al-Obaidly underscoring the urgency with which pirate sites must be shut down, particularly when it comes to sports. “You either make your money now or you don’t make money,” the blog quotes him as saying in the interview.

According to the blog, the company has taken other steps to fight piracy, including protecting against credential theft, system hacking, rebroadcasting, stolen streams and VPN abuse. Akamai has also signed on various partners with unique watermarking solutions to its content security ecosystem. They include:

• ContentArmor forensic watermarking; 
• Friend MTS ASiD watermarking; 
• INKA Entworks PallyCon forensic watermarking; 
• Irdeto TraceMark; 
• NAGRA NexGuard forensic watermarking; and 
• Verimatrix watermarking, StreamMark version 

The same ecosystem also has the ability to protect linear/simulcast streaming and video on demand, Nicholson added. 

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—Akamai is feeling the need for speed right now as it announced that its global content delivery network hit an all-time high of 106 Tbps (terabits per second) in its delivery of digital content. This is the first time the company’s CDN has surpassed the 100 Tbps mark.

“Delivering 106 terabits per second is roughly the same as downloading 3,300 two-hour HD movies every second, or nearly 12 million an hour,” said Adam Karon, Akamai executive vice president and general manager, media & carrier. The traffic peak was driven by content and data delivered at the same time, largely contributed to by a popular video game update, according to Karon.

It was in 2018 that Akamai surpassed 70 Tbps with its delivery combination of live sports, gaming releases and software updates. Today, it averages more than 50 Tbps on a daily basis.

With the television industry in a transition to live production over IP, the benefits of such a change are clear. Most notably, IP production can offer a more dynamic, agile and, in some cases, cost-efficient content creation process compared to its more rigid predecessor, SDI.

However, amid this transition, the industry is also beginning to better understand some of the potential drawbacks of IP production and what obstacles stand in the way. For example, as the consumption path has widened and become more complex, so has the surface for security attacks and threats. Spanning service disruption, loss of data and even loss of content through piracy or unauthorized viewership, security risks are among the biggest hurdles to overcome during this transition to IP.

So how can the industry not only mitigate these emerging risks but also stay ahead of the curve to take full advantage of IP live production? Content distributors will be best suited for what lies ahead by focusing on infrastructure security, protecting viewer data and securing the content itself.

BOLSTERING INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY

It’s important to remember that with such a broad attack surface inherent to IP delivery, securing the entire consumption path is key. Attacks can originate at multiple touchpoints, from content acquisition to the customer experience itself.

Preventing service outages or disruptions along this path is often the main goal. For example, quality of service can be jeopardized by distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, which is a type of cyberattack that attempts to make a service unavailable. Malware, which is designed to maliciously disrupt the normal operation of a service, and ransomware attacks, which force victims to pay a ransom to cybercriminals to regain access to content, are other examples of common cyberattacks that can disrupt content delivery.

Regardless of the type of attack, media organizations should consider security protocols that have massive scale and multiple layers of protection given these complexities. For example, for companies with cloud-based workflows, storage and other assets, the ability to stop attacks in the cloud is key. By doing so, threats can be mitigated before they reach an organization's critical applications or data centers, a point where significant disruptions can occur.

With bots playing a growing role in cyberattacks, a thorough bot management program is important to consider. However, because not all bots are created equal, flexible management strategies for the different types of bots that an organization could come across can be important for overall success when it comes to mitigating bot-based threats.

Regardless of the specific solution, it’s important to remember the complexity of these security risks and the need to focus on each stage of the content delivery process, including the acquisition, production and distribution stages.

PROTECTING TROVES OF VIEWER DATA

Today’s consumers expect a flawless viewing experience. But with data breaches becoming far too common and personal data often exposed as a result—not to mention an increased focus on data privacy—ensuring that such information is protected is now a crucial part of this overall experience.

In the age of social media, users are not shy about expressing their dissatisfaction with a service or product, meaning a single instance of compromised user information can permanently tarnish a brand’s reputation. In a world with so many content distributors and services to choose from, it doesn’t take much to lose a viewer or subscriber.

One growing trend is the credential stuffing attack, in which hackers use bots to access stolen login information to access user accounts. The scope of these attacks is massive—Akamai reported 55 billion credential stuffing attacks between November 2017 to March 31, 2019. Investing in modern bot detection and blocking solutions that leverage AI and machine learning can greatly reduce these threats.

KEEPING CONTENT SECURE

The value of content is skyrocketing in today’s competitive industry. Just look at Amazon, which is paying $130 million for two years of rights to stream the NFL on Thursday nights, separate from the rights other broadcasters are paying to air games over traditional network and pay television. It’s evident that content is becoming more valuable than ever, but with this trend comes growing security risks.

In fact, the content itself is only becoming a bigger target for cybercriminals—from hackers to content pirates—who see dollar signs in exploiting such a growing market. With IP delivery, the attack surface for tapping into this content is much wider and thus content distributors should consider strong safeguards to secure their most valuable asset.

Recent data suggests that piracy can cost the industry as much as $71 billion annually. And while the industry recognizes the problem, an Akamai survey of media technology influencers and decision-makers found that only 1% are “very confident” in their current security measures to address the issue.

Media encryption can be a great place to start to address content protection challenges. Investing in this approach ensures a unique encryption key is established for each delivered media segment and can offer message integrity verification data to prevent the theft of content during delivery. Tokenization can also make sure that only viewers that have been properly authenticated can access content, while geo and IP-based blocking can guarantee the same. Additionally, watermarking can be an effective strategy to prevent piracy. By adding unique watermarking to identify the source or recipient of content, each copy can be differentiated from stolen content, allowing organizations to find the true source of the piracy.

SECURING THE INDUSTRY’S FUTURE

By prioritizing investments into infrastructure security, protecting consumers and their data, and ensuring the content itself is secure, the industry will not only allow for a smooth transition to IP live delivery but will also ensure that IP delivery has the right foundation to securely succeed for years to come.

IP live delivery is the future, but only if we safeguard it.

Ritika Tandon is solutions engineering manager at Akamai.

Movies have and always will be a staple of the holiday season. As families come together and reunite with their loved ones, both new flicks and classic favorites alike are central to drumming up the holiday spirit and spending quality time together for many in the U.S. and beyond.

With more than 136 original Christmas movies, it’s no wonder the Hallmark Channel, owned by Crown Media, has become synonymous with the holiday season. In fact, the Hallmark Channel is regularly ranked as one of the top three most-watched cable channels during the Christmas season.

SEEKING CHEER BEYOND THE HOLIDAYS

Despite Hallmark’s success capitalizing on the holiday movie market, Crown Media recognized that delivering content through a variety of platforms is critical for television networks today to meet evolving consumer preferences. In order to remain competitive year-round, the company recently expanded program content both beyond the holiday season and traditional cable television.

With the streaming market growing and consumers shifting toward multiplatform video experiences, Crown Media seized the opportunity to launch two additional linear networks—Hallmark Movies & Mysteries and Hallmark Drama—along with both video on demand (VOD) and subscription video on demand (SVOD) platforms for all three of its networks.

MORE PLATFORMS, MORE PROBLEMS

Crown Media’s programming success is undeniable. The network has produced so much content over the years that it easily airs movies 24/7 during the holiday season. Despite this success, the launch of the new networks and services presented Crown Media with a new task of managing multiple platforms. This encompassed reaching new viewers and needing to understand them to best serve advertisers—a tough-but-necessary task for any network.

From video tagging and encoding to delivery, Crown Media initially worked with multiple vendors to individually address various aspects of its multiplatform strategy, resulting in sometimes complicated workflows. The media company was also forced to manage multiple video players native to each platform, as its original solution could not adequately support live linear channels or Neilsen viewer measurement. This required that the same functionality be repeatedly built out for each player.

Crown Media recognized it needed more sophisticated and streamlined workflows, media players and reporting to help track and understand its new platform network.

Crown Media enlisted the help of Akamai, which it was already using for content delivery network (CDN) services. In implementing Akamai’s Adaptive Media Player (AMP) and adaptive bitrate playback capabilities, Crown Media was able to reduce the vendor complexity and minimize integrations, ultimately, simplifying a monster task within its streaming workflows.

By using Adaptive Media Player, Crown Media deployed both on-demand and linear content playback for its expanding catalog. The company could also tap the FreeWheel AdManager for ad regulating, certify Nielsen measurement, deploy Comscore and Adobe measurement and gain visibility into its streaming video performance through Akamai Media Analytics.

KEY RESULTS

Akamai’s AMP helped Crown Media launch a single player for top devices and platforms: web (desktop and mobile), mobile (iOS and Android) and connected TV (tvOS and Fire TV).

The Media Player also helped maximize the impact of Crown Media’s evolving media workflow. For example, despite having a more sophisticated workflow to power its growing requirements, the media company actually now faces fewer touch points throughout the workflow. Crown Media platforms can support both on-demand and linear on major platforms, with Nielsen tracking across all of them.

With easy access to Nielsen viewer measurement, Crown Media can also better understand its traditional and digital viewership and monetize audiences for both traditional TV and its streaming properties. The company has also gained greater visibility into its video performance through Akamai Media Analytics with the ability to quickly identify and mitigate issues potentially impacting the viewer experience.

Perhaps most impressively, Akamai’s AMP helped Crown Media to nearly double its audience reach over the Christmas 2018 season. It has been a win-win: Crown Media has been able to fully monetize its content, and users have enjoyed an improved catalog and user experience as evidenced by increases in app store ratings.

UNWRAPPING SUCCESS ALL YEAR LONG

Looking ahead, Crown Media is positioned to take advantage of Akamai’s experience and Adaptive Media Player to advance its capabilities well beyond the holiday season. With support for header bidding and server-side ad integration, AMP can help make it possible to continue to monetize Crown Media content. In the meantime, Crown Media is enjoying an expanded reach and greater insight into audiences across web, mobile and connected TVs, ultimately providing better viewer experiences and helping the business reach new heights.

Frank Paolino is the senior director of Global Services for Akamai.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—Nobody likes buffering, but a recent report from Akamai puts a dollars and cents figure on just how much people dislike it. A key finding in Akamai’s “Understanding the Value of Consistency in OTT Video Delivery” report indicates that a single instance of video rebuffering can cost up to $85,000 in lost revenue.

That $85,000 figure comes from a look at the volume of video traffic for a major U.S. network between June 2017 and June 2018, totaling 370 million video plays. Through Akamai’s Media Analytics tool, it was determined that each instance of rebuffering results in 1% abandonment rate. Averaging the play duration, Akamai determined that one rebuffer translates into 497,417 hours lost, or 10.7 million ad impressions. At a CPM of $8, a rebuffer lose $85,500.

The link between rebuffering and viewer engagement make its avoidance a top priority for most service providers. According to one senior manager at a major broadcaster interviewed for the report, customer engagement drops significantly the more they see the “spinning wheel.” The manager said the goal is to keep the amount of rebuffering below 0.5%, which results in 90% of sessions being completed. When that numbers rise from 0.5-1% that number drops to 80%, and when it is more than 1% the rate drops to 50%.

The root of rebuffering can come from a number of different places. ISP, CDNs, the end user device or browser, Wi-Fi configurations, available bandwidth, network traffic and even the content can impact rebuffering.

Video providers are also noticing that their audiences are getting better at spotting drops in quality and are able to express them over platforms like Twitter. “We have a particularly tuned in audience, who debate with our engineering staff. You have no choice but to engage,” said one CEO of a video aggregator.

The report is a combination of research data and interviews with senior executives from video distributors. Access the full report on akamai.com.

CAMBRIDGE, MA.—Akamai says it has integrated its content delivery network capabilities with Microsoft Azure Media Services and Blob Storage. The collaboration will make it easier and more cost effective for media organizations to combine cloud-based video processing with edge delivery, from content preparation to playback, according to Akamai.

Going forward, Akamai will directly connect its edge network to Azure using a high-speed Azure ExpressRoute connection. This will result in significant efficiencies when storing and delivering content and provide mutual customers with lower, more predictable cost structures between Azure and Akamai's CDN, the companies said.

Akamai will enhance the delivery of live and on-demand streaming workflows through Azure Media Services, Microsoft's cloud video workflow platform for encoding, packaging, DRM and Video AI video metadata indexing. Together, Akamai and Microsoft will work to offer customers higher quality streaming delivery, lower latencies and more choices for their integrated media workflows through mutual partners such as Harmonic, Telestream and more.

As part of the agreement, Akamai will enable select strategic customer solutions to run on Azure and enter into a co-sell relationship with Microsoft, wherein its products will be available in the Azure Marketplace.

Akamai and Microsoft are exhibiting at the 2019 NAB Show in booths SL3324 and SL6717, respectively, April 8th-11th in Las Vegas. 

If there is a single truth about trends in the Internet security space, it’s that every year brings more of the same. Akamai’s 2018 State of the Internet (SOTI) report looks forward to 2019 by describing ongoing patterns from the past few years, and suggests they’ll likely continue to evolve in the ways that they already have. Broadcasters, like other internet users, should continue to expect threats in the form of brute force DDoS attacks, application level attacks, credential stuffing and the theft and sale of credentials.

A more specific portfolio of threats exists for broadcasters, who are heavily invested in the Internet of Things, which are also vulnerable. A recent Gartner report estimates that by 2020 there will be over 26 billion connected devices, excluding PCs, tablets, and smartphones.

[Read: Cybersecurity: What Execs Should Know]

There are a number of weaknesses in IoT devices, which make them vulnerable to hackers.

• Very little security is built into the device itself, often as an economy measure, but also because some safeguards may impede operation.

• Because of poor network segmentation, the device may be directly exposed to the web. It can act as a pivot to the internal network, opening up a backdoor to let criminals in.

• Developers of IoT devices sometimes leave behind code or features developed in beta that are no longer relevant. This hidden functionality can provide a way in for hackers.

• Default credentials are often hard coded. That means that the software won't force you to create a unique password. Typing “1-2-3-4-5” can get you into a surprising number of devices.

A glimpse at best practices might be gleaned by looking at the U.S. government, which introduced the Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act. It requires that any devices sold to the American government be patchable, not have any known security vulnerabilities, and allow users to change their default passwords. If you’re not working for the government, you’re on your own to figure all of this out.

SAN DIEGO–Verimatrix, a specialist in securing and enhancing revenue for network-connected devices and services, has acquired the Akamai Identity Services IP from streaming giant Akamai. The acquisition adds TV Everywhere authentication service capabilities to Verimatrix’s security portfolio.

“This acquisition fits perfectly with our roadmap to streamline content workflows via cloud-based technologies to connect global consumers with great content,” said Mike Kleiman, COO, Verimatrix. “We are able to extend the value of these global identity services under our solution umbrella and provide a more flexible, yet standards-based alternative that will improve the experience for consumers and open new markets for content providers and programmers.”

TV Everywhere allows pay-TV subscribers to authenticate their ability to stream subscription content on multiple devices. 

AIS provides a common framework for implementing and scaling TVE services for multichannel video operators. Verimatrix says it will offer the enhanced and rebranded authentication services as an integrated component of the Verimatrix Content Authority System (VCAS) and Viewthority, the newly launched connected content distribution platform, as well as a standalone solution in order to best match content providers’ needs.

“As a long-standing partner, we know that Verimatrix will be able to enrich the AIS core technology and help content providers take TV Everywhere to the next level,” said Campbell Foster, Vice President of Media Industry and Product Marketing, Akamai. “This is a natural extension to Verimatrix’s value proposition of securing and enhancing revenue by supporting new ways to monetize content.” 

CAMBRIDGE, MA—Streaming giant Akamai has announced updates to its Akamai Intelligent Edge Platform to secure and enable cloud-based applications and web-based experiences.

The new capabilities are designed to improve resiliency for apps with automated protections, streamlined workflows, and support for additional apps and use cases; Enable better visibility and insight to facilitate prioritization, streamline decision making, and ensure better business outcomes; save money associated with egress from public clouds, and enhance performance, security and quality for streaming TV experiences, and provide powerful APIs and automation to simplify complex tasks, and empower developers to maintain agile development practices.

"As more companies move their operations and apps to the cloud, they are striving to balance the demands for security and agility, often firefighting point problems instead of directing their digital strategy. They need greater insight, agility and quality from their service provider partners to get there in a cost effective way," said Ari Weil, vice president of product marketing at Akamai. "Akamai is innovating to help organizations meet continuously evolving challenges, threats, and competitive pressures."

[Read: Akamai: Rise Of IoT Devices Causes Some Security Concerns]

As cloud adoption grows, Akamai says it is responding by launching new features in response to the threat from hackers using AI to deploy larger more sophisticated botnets that target web applications. The new enhancements include layer detection methods such as statistical analysis of user behavior, sensor inputs from connected devices, and continuous updates to reputational scoring.

The upgrades to Akamai’s edge security platform support business insight with streamlined workflows and real-time and historical reporting abilities, so that customers can understand the impact that hacker techniques like botnets are having on protected endpoints, the company said. Added agility comes from automated protections and built-in API protection to secure the entire web application footprint, and new client connectors that secure employee and application access from anywhere. Akamai has also expanded its platform for instant DDoS attack mitigation to provide additional capacity and regional coverage.

Akamai is also introducing new features to its Akamai Intelligent Edge to provide real user insights to understand the impact that changes to a web page or application can have on user experience, enabling them to make better decisions. That insight can be leveraged by organizations to implement automated performance and quality improvements, drive delivery efficiency, accelerate rendering, and eliminate errors that negatively affect the user experience. Akamai has also added support for federated development, containerized environments, and microservices architectures, empowering developers to iterate and test site changes and Akamai configurations before deploying them.

For media companies seeking to make streaming TV easier and more cost effective from multiple origins – including scenarios where content is hosted by cloud providers, the company is introducing Akamai Direct Connect, designed to help customers achieve reliable, secure and cost effective first-mile transit for linear video. This platform update also provides ultra low latency support for live and linear streaming typically within one-to-two seconds of traditional broadcast, using the common media application format (CMAF). In addition, Akamai Cloud Wrapper is architected to provide flexibility for customers using public clouds, improve offload performance and reduce transit costs. These platform updates will be particularly useful as broadcasters shift more of their content workflows to the cloud.

WASHINGTON—Collectively, the growing wave of streaming and OTT versions of linear programs has generated a tidal wave of usage, posing challenges to producers and distributors who are hustling to find ways to create a “consistent experience” for audiences who see programs on a variety of devices and via multiple delivery systems.

According to a Parks Associates analysis last month, 52 percent of U.S. broadband households subscribe to both pay TV and one or more OTT video services. The study also found that about two-thirds of U.S. broadband households subscribe to an OTT service, and 38 percent have more than one OTT subscription.

A separate study by the Interactive Advertising Bureau found that in North America, 65 percent of viewers watch streaming video once or several times per day—slightly less than the streaming usage in Europe, Asia/Pacific and far less than in South America and the Middle East. And yet another report from PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that OTT video revenue will reach nearly $31 billion by 2022, up from about $22 billion this year.

MULTIPLE CHALLENGES

Despite such rosy data, however, the video streaming outlook faces multiple challenges. For example, Dan Rayburn, a principal analyst at Frost & Sullivan, frets that the current streaming infrastructure cannot keep pace with the growth in streaming demand. In a recent online blog Rayburn contended that, “if online video consumption continues to take market share from traditional distribution channels and ultimately replaces traditional broadcast distribution, then streaming video infrastructure will need to increase its capacity by over 3x in the coming years.”

Moreover, Rayburn predicts that if 4K UHD replaces the current high-definition signals for streamed content, then “the required bandwidth will increase by a factor of another 4x.

”Adding 8K, used for “true virtual reality” would trigger the need for “another 3x increase in capacity,” Rayburn said in a blog last month. He concluded that such growth scenarios would require a 20-fold increase in the streaming video infrastructure during the coming decade.

“Building 20x the data centers and filling them with 20x the servers in addition to constructing the power plants to power this infrastructure is clearlly not an economically viable or sustainable strategy,” Rayburn added. But his modest conclusion was only that “we need to start talking now about how to meet the “capacity gap” challenge.

WANTED: NEW WORKFLOW TOOLS

That realty—the necessary coexistence of linear and streaming content—has triggered aggressive efforts to empower the media supply chain with new tools to handle workflows for the emerging market.

“Workflows, as repeatable processes, are evolving constantly in reaction to new content manufacturing and distribution scenarios,”said Richard N. Yelen, head of North American Business Development for Accenture Digital Video Products and Services. He cited “the migration from traditional licensed content distribution to ‘app syndication,’ as content owners take greater ownership over the viewing experience.”

“We are increasingly looking at ways of using data [aggregated from consumption platforms, AI-generated from media analysis and other sources] in a highly secured way to drive automation into the supply chain,” Yelen added.

He acknowledged the “distinct differences” between broadcast and cable operator products and services “with obvious intersections” but emphasized that both of those traditional platforms are “quite different” for video on demand and live streaming.

“The difference is between file-based workflow vs. active real-time streaming,” Yelen said. “Live streaming requires more careful/intense real-time management of service continuity and user experience since popular large live events, such as sporting matches, can cause unpredictable viewership spikes.

“These spikes often have load implications across the viewing platform ecosystem, including both core platform services [e.g. user authentication], as well as network and caching [e.g. CDN performance],” Yelen added.

Jon Alexander, senior director of product management for Akamai, noted the special considerations for live vs. on-demand.

“For live and linear delivery, we emphasize live origin capabilities—ingesting video into our network from as close to the origination point [ideally production or playout] as quickly as possible,” Alexander said, noting that for on-demand content, Akamai seeks to move content “into our storage environment or from a customer’s on-premise or cloud storage platform. He emphasized the architecture that seeks to enable “capabilities such as multisource multicast and prepositioning of content.”

The technologies Akamai leverages for OTT video delivery differ from those used for traditional broadcast and cable transmission, according to Alexander.

“The workflows themselves are different, as is encoding and security,” he said. “For OTT, we’re delivering content files in chunks, and we’re using the open, unmanaged internet as the transport layer. While there are changes on the horizon, the majority of OTT delivery today is unicast—one stream to one device—as opposed to one-to-many broadcast delivery.”

But although the underlying technologies are very different, Akamai is working to enable the same experience, he said.

“The bar for consumer expectations has been set by broadcast, so we’re aiming to reach and ultimately exceed those expectations by tuning every layer of the delivery stack from the client and network transport protocols all the way through the application,” he added. “This helps enable efficient video delivery across the internet from the origin to the end-viewer device, whatever or wherever it may be.”

Aspera, an IBM operating unit, has developed a range of streaming video solutions, based on its Fast Adaptive Secure Protocol (FASP), a large data transport protocol that eliminates TCP’s loss and error handling and the resulting erratic transfer rate swings.

“FASPStream enables centralized, real-time production of high bit-rate programming, eliminating the need to colocate costly production staff at remote venues,” Todd Kelly, director of product marketing, explained. “It also supports in-line transcoding, packaging and delivery to accelerate live video delivery and facilitates open file workflows for real-time editing and production. By lowering the production costs for all kinds of events, especially ‘tier 2’ and ‘tier 3’ events, broadcasters can create and deliver new content [that targets] new audiences.”

Kelly also emphasized the value of collaboration, citing his company’s work with Telestream to build a joint solution that integrates FASPStream technology into Telestream’s Vantage and Lightspeed Live software.

“This API-level integration provides a truly innovative approach to delivering live, broadcast-quality video streams from the venue to the remote production facility, enabling workflows never before possible,” Kelly said.

SeaChange International is also focusing on the multiplatform ecosystem with its new “cFlow solutions” portfolio, which debuted in June. According to SeaChange Marketing Vice President Kurt Michel, the solution was developed to serve broadcast, cable and OTT customers who “want a single workflow management system that handles all of the associated workflows.” In addition, SeaChange’s PanoramiC platform, a pre-integrated end-to-end cloud-based video delivery platform, can be used by content producers, broadcasters, cable and mobile operators and aggregators (such as vMVPDs) for multiplatform delivery.

“We have customers who perform over 1,000 quality checks on incoming content, before they even start processing it,” Michel explained. “With adaptive bitrate streaming, their workflows can literally produce dozens of variations of a given title,” including content rights, geo restrictions and other factors.

He characterized SeaChange’s “medium-agnostic” approach as a “cohesive, viewer-centric system” with modular elements that are “medium-specific where technical requirement dictate.”

Michel cited ad insertion technologies that can be adapted to the mechanisms used on different networks.

“Our session management capabilities allow a viewer to stop watching a title on their traditional TV, and pick up where they left off on their smartphone,” he explained.

VIDEO LATENCY & SPORTS SPEEDS

IBM Aspera’s Kelly underscored the importance of low-latency for streamed content.

“Capturing and producing content for live events such as sports, news, training or education programs poses unique challenges, and true real-time, remote production has long been one of the ‘holy grails’ for broadcasters that produce live events,” he said.

The issue of latency in high-speed streaming of sports has become more prominent due to the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing sports betting in the U.S., Kelly added.

Akamai’s Alexander agrees that latency is one of the most significant differences between traditional broadcast/cable delivery and OTT systems.

“We’ve done a lot of development to reduce end-to-end latency to 10 seconds on our generally available delivery and live origin products... equivalent to the latency you see on traditional television,” Alexander told TV Technology. “This is especially important for the live sports experience, where you want viewers—no matter how they’re watching—to see a big play at roughly the same time rather than hear cheers or groans or see something on social media before they actually see it live.”

“While 10-second latency is acceptable for most applications, we continue to push for lower latency,” Alexander added. “We have demonstrated two- to three-second end-to-end latency using chunked-transfer encoding, which is being successfully tested with several customers at the moment.”

SeaChange’s Michel also addressed the latency challenges for sports events and other live programming, which he characterized as part of a bigger reality: “workflow complexity is increasing.”

“Real-time content protection [adds]... an additional layer of complexity,” he said. “Viewer tolerance for problems with live sporting events is usually very low, since they are emotionally attached and the content is highly perishable. The live experience is everything.”

He emphasized that providers are not satisfied with an either/or for live video-on-demand.”

“They require both live and VOD,” he said.

PROMISING OUTLOOK

As vendors look toward the next steps in managing conventional and future video delivery, one theme comes through: the need for a consistent experience.

“A consistent experience across viewing devices and platforms” is the objective of SeaChange’s portfolio of content management systems, advertising management and back office systems, explained Kurt Michel, vice president of marketing for the Acton, Mass.-based company.

“Consistency of the viewing experience,” is Akamai’s goal, said Jon Alexander, senior director of product management for Akamai.

“Uniform, unaltered, in-order byte stream that equally supports constant bit rate and adaptive bit rate formats,” according to Todd Kelly director of product marketing for IBM Aspera, in more technical terms.

“Reliable functioning of many large platforms,” is how Accenture’s Yelen summed it up.

“OTT will continue to grow and to dislodge traditional viewing experiences, with mobile traffic growing even further in prominence,” Yelen said. “The rollout of 5G services will be an additional accelerator because it will provide much higher quality and less compressed images when streamed to a device or television. Better connectivity in highly populated urban areas as a result of 5G may also boost consumers’ desire and ability to stream videos.”

Alexander expects to see more mainstream adoption of the HEVC and CMAF [Common Media Application Format] standards for streaming this year.

“We’re still early in the OTT adoption cycle, so consistently meeting performance expectations at 10x or 100x current traffic levels is a major point of emphasis for Akamai,” Alexander said.

Kelly, citing IBM Aspera’s work with Fox Sports on World Cup coverage, pointed out that, waiting for transfers to be complete before editing is “not an option.” He explained that while monitoring the soccer action in Russia, the Fox Sports production team in Los Angeles was “able to create clips while files are still growing,” constantly keeping in mind that delays “would not meet the audience expectation for live viewing.”

Collectively, all that upbeat exuberance seems to justify the forecast of Colin Dixon, chief analyst and founder of nScreenMedia, a Silicon Valley consultancy.

“By 2022, video streaming will scale to TV audience size,” Dixon said in June. “Linear TV broadcasters will be taking advantage of technology to provide fully addressable linear experiences.”

Consistently.

MOSCOW--With about a week to go till the World Cup final, it’s clear who the big is: live video streaming.

Akamai Technologies, which is providing live video streaming or more than 50 rights holders in 100 countries, reports the tournament is already the biggest sporting event it has ever delivered when it comes to online traffic.

[Read: World Cup Ratings A Mixed Bag For U.S. Networks]

Within the first 10 days of the tournament, total traffic surpassed all 64 games of the 2014 Brazil World Cup, and by the end of the second round, Akamai had delivered more than twice the traffic it did in 2014 and 15x compared to its 2010 total, the company said.

The July 3 Columbia-England second-round match was responsible for the highest traffic peak during the tournament so far with 18.59Tb/s. That is the all-time high mark for any sports competition Akamai has ever been involved in. By way of comparison, the peak for the 2014 World Cup was the Netherlands-Argentina semi-final with 6.9Tb/s, a record for the company at the time.

According to the company, the 15.8Tb/s video traffic spike for the June 15 Portugal-Spain match was the highest for the group stage.

More information is available on the Akamai website.

NEW YORK — Even though the price of UHD/4K TV sets continue to fall, the fact remains that there’s still a dearth of available ultra-high resolution content and what content is — even in 2018 — is reserved for high-profile events such as the FIFA World Cup.

Except when it comes to over-the-top streaming services.

“4K streaming is leading the way right now,” said Will Law, chief architect of media cloud engineering at Akamai. “Satellite is bandwidth constrained at the present, and while cable is less constrained, these are still fixed infrastructure.”

Streaming services don’t have the same fixed infrastructure, even if the content is delivered via cable broadband, and as such it can reach a wider audience.

“OTT makes it easier to get the 4K content,” added Law. “Netflix has hundreds of titles already, and we’re seeing the other providers steadily adding content.”

Streaming services may be ensuring that content is future-proofed, so that resolution and overall picture quality don’t appear dated to future viewers.

“Netflix is already one of the biggest distributors of 4K content and treats higher-resolution content as premium,” said Richard Brandon, CMO of Edgeware, a Swedish provider of content delivery networks. “The OTT giant’s guidelines for ‘Netflix Originals’ state that programming has to be shot in native 4K so it’s been continually investing in UHD content to add to its library. At the same time the BBC is leading the charge in the U.K., streaming all its World Cup matches in 4K and will do the same with its Wimbledon coverage.”

BEYOND RESOLUTION

To TV manufacturers — and even the media that covers the market — 4K and UHD are being used interchangeably, but in essence 4K is just part of the bigger UHD picture.

“4K is the resolution, and this is one of many parts of UHD,” explained Law. “4K really is just focusing on the number of pixels. With UHD it is important to also discuss what this means for framerate — 30fps or 60fps — as well as High Dynamic Range, which is far more perceivable to viewers across devices than just the number of pixels.”

However, HDR isn't completely tied to UHD.

[Read: “To Be Or Not To Be UHD,” Is The Question]

“HDR is not part of the current UHD specs, but the two come hand in hand,” said Colin Dixon, founder and chief analyst of U.K.-based research firm nScreenMedia. “Everything that is UHD on Netflix is HDR as well, and we’re seeing that becoming true for Amazon and the other services as well. HDR is something you can see on all screen sizes, which isn’t really the case for just the resolution.”

The biggest issue with UHD/4K delivery is not enough bandwidth.

“The ability to deliver 4K is part of the attraction of internet-delivered services — it’s one of the ways operators can deliver an OTT service that goes beyond broadcast,” said Brandon. “The extra stress it brings to the availability of network bandwidth is an issue however, especially when streams are being delivered to several kinds of end-user devices.”

The issue will become more serious as more viewers access higher-resolution content, according to Jim Defilippis, CEO of TMS Consulting in Los Angeles.

“UHD content doesn’t represent a big cost increase to OTT services,” he said. “The costs are related to the number of customers, so when you have only a few customers it really doesn’t cost much. The bad news is that the costs will go up as you gain customers.”

DATA LIMITS

In addition to availability of UHD content, another limiting factor is data limits.

“You are good to go if you are streaming a movie or two a week, and in that case you won’t reach your ISP’s bandwidth limit,” said Dixon. “If all of the content you are watching is in UHD you’d have a problem.”

Dixon estimates that no more than 20 percent of the current U.S. market that regularly watches streaming services is consuming UHD content. “That market is growing, and if 100 percent of the audience suddenly embraced UHD, the broadband providers would have to build up the pipes,” he said.

“4K streaming is leading the way right now.” —Will Law, Akamai

Some vendors, including Harmonic, provide solutions that handle the growth in adoption of UHD, and reduce latency. This has included its EyeQ system that is designed to reduced bandwidth consumption by up to 30 percent without requiring any additional changes in the existing H.264 delivery infrastructure or the vast array of decoders on the market.

“We are working to improve UHD streaming, especially for sporting events,” said Eric Gallier, vice president of marketing at Harmonic. “Our solution provides latency that is comparable to what you’d see in traditional broadcasts. This is not only about the encoding but also about the playout.”

At the 2018 NAB Show, Harmonic unveiled its new end-to-end UHD HDR solution for live sports streaming. The solution features Harmonic’s ViBE CP9000 contribution encoder for VOS 360 media processing SaaS for encoding, packaging, origin server capabilities and OTT distribution.

HURDLES LEFT TO OVERCOME

Bandwidth aside there are still other issues to resolve, especially as there are a lot of technologies at play.

“Streaming isn’t all unicorns and ice cream cake right now,” said Akamai’s Law. “We need to resolve the standardization of the various HDR protocols as there are currently too many. This creates fragmentation in the market and that could drive up production costs.”

Copyright protection and DRM could also remain an issue, but so too could piracy of UHD content.

“Pirated content is usually degraded in quality from redistribution and added compression, but when a stream starts in 4K, it can be degraded but still remain high enough quality to watch,” said Edgeware’s Brandon. “Content providers can overcome this by deploying solutions that allow them to add a digital watermark to each stream. This can then be used to identify where a stream was stolen from, letting users better protect their investments into 4K content.”

THE NET NEUTRALITY FACTOR

Since FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced last November that net neutrality would be repealed, many industry observers have warned that streaming media could suffer but others are now saying the issue is being unnecessarily politicized.

“We are working to improve UHD streaming, especially for sporting events.” — Eric Gallier, Harmonic

"Many are concerned about distribution equality," said Law. "Net neutrality can impact the economics of how content is delivered from source to the last mile."

High-bandwidth content, however, could end up costing more just to get to that last mile.

“When there is an outlay from a service such as Netflix that is delivering a lot of content to other providers, this is when it becomes an issue,” said Dixon at nScreenMedia. “If a lot of 4K content crosses the wires from any internet company there will be an outcry from the ISPs for the transit cost. That is where some companies have had to buy ‘preferential pipes’ — that is in essence what Netflix is already doing.”

Part of this ongoing issue reaches back decades to how the internet was developed as an interconnected “network of networks,” where content passes through from one provider to another.

“Net neutrality is the key to the operation of gateways between internet providers and the peering agreements that insure equal treatment for traffic as long as the traffic is balanced between the providers,” said Defilippis. “In a non-net neutrality situation, an internet provider is free to charge for improved gateway performance (bandwidth and latency). 4K content is sensitive to these increases due to the size of the files and the bandwidth required.

“UHD will amplify the throttling issues which are bound to happen with the change to net neutrality,” Defilippis concluded.

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If you weren't able to attend TV Technology and Broadcasting & Cable’s "State of Streaming: How OTT leaders view quality, opportunity shifts to live/live linear channels" webinar, sponsored by Akamai, you can check it out here. We want to continue the conversation on this very important topic, so have a look at the webinar recording and join in.

Click here to access the full recording.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS.—A new mini-documentary from WorkingNation, a national campaign focused on helping Americans prepare for the fast-changing labor market, features an Akamai Technologies program to diversify and broaden its potential workforce by giving participants the skills needed to be hired for an entry-level position at the company.

The video, “No Experience Required: Building a New Digital Workforce,” focuses on Takara Larsen as she takes part in the Akamai Technical Academy, a program for people who do not have a STEM [science , technology, engineering and math] background but demonstrate an aptitude for and interest in technology. Upon graduating from the program, participants are prepared to work for Akamai for a contract period. If they excel during this period, the company can offer them a full-time position.

Akamai launched the academy in January 2016 and has graduated five classes so far. A total of 101 people have completed the program, or 94 percent of the 107 accepted, according to the company. So far, two classes have become eligible to convert to full-time positions.

Thirty-nine people, or 95 percent of the total eligible, have been offered full-time positions. Fifty-five more are in the pipeline that leads to conversion, Akamai said. Plans for the first five-month academy semester in 2018 are being finalized.

The three-minute documentary is part of WorkingNation’s “Do Something Awesome” series, which focuses on programs nationwide that are training a future-proof workforce.

Those interested in being notified about future academy classes should visit the Akamai Technical Academy website.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS.—Internet connectivity speeds were on the rise the whole world over according to Akamai’s “Fourth Quarter, 2016 State of the Internet Report.” Using data gathered from the Akamai Intelligent Platform, the report displayed findings on connection speeds, broadband adoption metrics, IPv4 exhaustion and IPv6 implementation, and notable disruptions and events.

Among the key findings in the report was a 12 percent increase in the global average connection speed to 7 Mbps, a 26 percent increase year-over-year. It was also noted the broadband adoption of Global 4, 10, 15 and 25 Mbps increased by 15 percent, 31 percent, 37 percent and 45 percent year-over-year, respectively. Additional findings found that South Korea had the highest average connection speed at 26.1 Mbps in the fourth quarter, and that Washington D.C. led the U.S. in average connection speed at 26.7 Mbps.

In terms of mobile connection speeds, the average rate ranged from a high of 26.8 Mbps in the U.K. and a low of 2.9 Mbps in Venezuela. The average mobile connection speed among qualified surveyed countries/regions exceeded 10 Mbps broadband in 30 of them, while 58 saw average speeds of 4 Mbps broadband or more; up from 52.

Q4 2016 also saw a slight decrease in the number of unique IPv4 addresses connected to the Akamai Intelligent Platform with a total of nearly 807 million, down 0.4 percent from Q4 2015. Also, there was 6.4 million IPv4 allocations/assignments in Q4, down from 16 million in Q3 2016. Meanwhile, IPv6 continues to grow, particularly in Belgium, where 47 percent of its content requests originated, a 20 percent increase quarter-over-quarter.

There were also a number of instances where connectivity was disrupted in Q4. An incident in the Bahamas occurred due to Hurricane Matthew; Gambia dropped to zero on Nov. 30 before its country’s elections on Dec. 1, then returned to normal Dec. 2; the Iraqi government continued to occasionally block internet access across the country in what it says was to prevent cheating on exams; and Pakistan cited technical issues at Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited for a drop in traffic in December.

The full report can be accessed here.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS.—The Internet of Things (IoT) is a development that looks to connect the internet into everyday devices and a key part of many industries plans moving forward. However, while it is still in its early stages, its susceptibility to distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks remains a concern. This was among the findings of Akamai’s Q4 2016 “State of the Internet/Security Report.”

While Akamai did highlight that the number of attacks were lower than expected in relation to the 2016 holiday season, IoT devices were a big source of the DDoS attacks that did occur. Akamai attributed most of the attacks to Mirai, and IoT-based botnet, though a pair of other IoT-based botnets also caused some issues. The growth of IoT devices, Akamai reports, is expanding the pool of attack resources. “As vulnerable devices are added to IoT-based botnets, we expect a second surge in botnet capabilities and DDoS attack size,” per the report.

The report also found that DDoS attacks greater than 300 Gbps are becoming more common. Seven DDoS attacks of more than 300 Gbps occurred in 2016, including three in the fourth quarter; the largest was a 517 Gbps attack from the Spike DDoS toolkit. However, none of these attacks were IoT-based, as Akamai indicates that the more botnets that develop for IoT-based attacks, the less availability they will have for resources.

Still, Akamai expects that the attacks caused by IoT-based botnets like Mirai are more likely to increase in the short term. “The Internet of Things is in its infancy, and device security is only starting to bubble up in the consciousness of IoT developers, the companies that employ them, and governments,” the report wrote. “We expect to see many more vulnerable and compromised devices before devices become more secure. The good news is that there are significant reasons for companies to invest in security in the future.”

Visit Akamai to read the full report.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS.—It turns out President Trump’s inauguration last Friday was a record setting event, as it pertains to live streaming. According to content delivery network services provider Akamai, the 2017 Presidential Inauguration was the most live video streamed news event that company has delivered.

Akamai live video streams for the inauguration reached a peak of 8.7 Tbps at 12:04 p.m. ET, during President Trump’s speech. This exceeded the previous record of 7.5 Tbps that occurred during the 2016 presidential election last November. Total number of concurrent viewers supported during peak time reached 4.6 million, per Akamai.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS.—A different kind of Olympic record was broken during NBC’s coverage of the 2016 Rio Olympics in August, as a total of 3.3 billion streaming minutes were provided, including 2.71 billion live, per Akamai. NBC’s online video streaming, website and video delivery was supported by Akamai Technologies.

Akamai provided NBC with its Media Delivery and Acceleration Services to stream live and on-demand video of its coverage through NBCOlympics.com, the NBC Sports mobile app, and connected TV platforms. Akamai’s ingest capabilities enabled content to be downlinked to and delivered across the Akamai platform. NBC also utilized Akamai’s Ion for web and mobile experiences across devices and networks, and the Kona Site Defender to protect NBC Olympic sites against DDoS and web attacks.

“We not only set new benchmarks for the amount of content delivered; we also for the first time live streamed to connected TVs and introduced virtual reality experiences, all of which provided viewers with more choice than ever for how, when and where they were able to enjoy NBC Olympics’ coverage from Rio,” said Rick Cordella, executive vice president and general manager, digital media, NBC Sports Group.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS.—The old adage in sports is that defense wins championships, but streaming giant Akamai wants to play both sides of the field. The company—one of the world’s largest content delivery network service providers— recently built a Broadcast Operations Command Center at its Cambridge, Mass., location that is designed to play both offense and defense, providing real-time monitoring of OTT content, pro-active troubleshooting, and issue detection and resolution. The overall goal, according to Akamai’s Director of Media Operations Matt Azzarto, is to make the distribution of online content “greater than or equal to the TV experience” for the end user and content providers.

Azzarto joined Akamai about six months ago after a decade at NBC Universal in its broadcast operation center and network origination center. When he joined, Akamai was already working on the development of its BOCC facility with what he described as “considerable momentum.” With Azzarto on board, the project progressed from a cubicle space to an operation center in 100 days. Along the way he hired a team of 20 staffers, some with backgrounds in traditional broadcast, others with networking skillsets. “We’re bringing together what I call your ‘next-gen operations and support team’ for media distribution,” said Azzarto, “specifically addressing the OTT challenges that broadcasters are facing today.”

SET-UP

Akamai's BOCC Facility

The BOCC facility is currently in beta, with all 20 staffers working with the system simultaneously. However, as Azzarto points out, they hope to expand in the future so that they can have three to five staffers in the facility on shifts 24/7 to effectively monitor and address potential issues before they become larger problems. This proactive response differs from Akamai’s previous, more defensive, set-up, which could only react to issues when customers who deal with live event streaming and linear channels complained.

In addition to the extra manpower, the new BOCC now features “BOSS,” (broadcast operating support system), a primarily Akamai-designed toolset that gauges performance and identifies potential issues and where in the workflow they may affect quality or performance. Some of these tools—and the BOCC system overall—are based on Akamai’s Network Operations Command Center (NOCC). While the BOSS is new, the BOCC also uses tools like Akamai’s Monocle and Alert Messaging System, which originally came from the NOCC. The BOCC uses these tools to redefine the alerts to be media specific, according to Azzarto. “We’re looking at different components from encoder through entry point through mid-tier through archiver and end-to-end user; all the way through the workflow at a component level we’re monitoring with custom alerts and then we’re reacting to those alerts,” he said.

“The idea is detect an issue before it becomes an outage,” Azzarto explained. “The ultimate goal is to maintain that uptime, maintain that availability. And then beyond that it’s to improve it. How do we reduce start-up time for your player? How do we reduce re-buffering on the player side? How do we reduce latency through the network? How do we increase the bitrates that you’re able to provide? Those are the things that we are focusing on with this team.”

EXPANDING THE SYSTEM

Azzarto and his team already put the system through its paces during television’s biggest annual event, as part of CBS’ support team for its Super Bowl 50 broadcast. Azzarto described it as a good experience to see what the team could provision in the tools and what they could do from a pro-active monitoring standpoint. Akamai hopes to use the BOCC for similar large events, in which case it could scale up its support team anywhere from 30-50 people to help monitor. Between 20-30 staffers were on hand to work the Super Bowl broadcast.

While the new facility is primarily focused on the OTT, live linear market right now, Azzarto and his team plan to include an on-demand component for phase two. Akamai is also hoping to expand its BOCC services with a second location most likely outside the U.S., according to Azzarto. Although no location has been determined, the two facilities should be able to share relevant information with each other.

“Suffice to say what we are trying to do is open up this ‘black box’ of the CDN for our media customers and say ‘here is what’s happening at a component level,’” said Azzarto. “For me, it’s similar to what we would do within our team in a broadcast environment: Looking at what we would call a ‘channel chain,’ or everything from the control room through to the encoder to the uplink. We would look at everything at a component level and try to alert and respond to those issues in real-time. We’re trying to take a similar kind of approach, just do it across the CDN.”