Synamedia zeros in on industrial-scale piracy with new intelligence-first security model

Synamedia zeros

Synamedia, the world’s largest independent video software provider, today launched a new intelligence-first security model laser-focused on eradicating streaming pirates’ businesses and protecting legitimate providers’ revenues. In an industry first, this data-led model also makes it possible to measure the efficacy and ROI of anti-piracy initiatives.

The new approach combines digital and human intelligence to zero in on the increasingly sophisticated streaming piracy underworld that is threatening the media industry. It provides unparalleled forensic insights into the minds, motivations, and behaviors of pirates, and their infrastructure and business models, for a more powerful, targeted anti-piracy response.

It is already fueling technology innovations across Synamedia’s security portfolio, helping customers protect revenues, negotiate fair content license terms such as sports rights, and ensure compliance.

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Several new product enhancements that are already benefiting from this methodology are:

  • A redesigned counter-piracy operations center – Synamedia EverGuard – the beating heart of Synamedia’s intelligence and analysis platform and Streaming Piracy Disruption (SPD) managed service. Incorporating big data analytics, Synamedia EverGuard creates a list of recommended actions against a set of devices, user accounts, and pirate streaming sites. It supports multiple ways of disrupting services and analyzes the effectiveness of each disruption mechanism for better future outcomes. The choice of action and time of enforcement is designed to cause maximum impact to pirates and nudge viewers back to legitimate services.
  • A rich new UI for the SPD service, allowing operational security personnel to fine-tune the counter-piracy operations center recommendations if required to meet specific business needs.
  • A new generation of intelligence agents including the new client- and/or headend-based watermarking agents that are resistant to pirates’ evasion techniques, and a new analytics agent.
  • A new raft of disruption agents for a broader choice of responses, including new quarantining agents in the CDN and the control plane, as well as device revocation agents for turning off and de-registering devices proven to have been used by pirates.
  • CSFEye, a credentials sharing and fraud solution that is an extension to the Credentials Sharing Insight service. CSFEye specifically targets fraudsters engaged in stealing or abusing accounts for commercial purposes, who compromise the privacy and identity of legitimate subscribers and pose a legal and commercial risk to service providers. CSFEye now includes the ability to identify all shadow users (both sharers and fraudsters), recommend and execute a range of actions in order to mitigate the risk and convert them into paying customers.

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“Video piracy is becoming an existential threat to the media industry because the barrier to entry is low and the return on investment very high. Eradicating these businesses is made more difficult by the fact that they have sophisticated operations, are well organized, and make extensive use of the latest technologies,” said Yael Fainaro, Senior Vice President, Security at Synamedia.

Fainaro continued, “With a blend of human and digital intelligence we can build a detailed picture of the pirate ecosystem, crack the criminal mindset and – working closely with law enforcement agencies – ultimately shut down pirates’ businesses. This hard data is an industry gamechanger, making it possible to move away from a best-effort cost model to one that proves the efficacy and ROI of any anti-piracy spend.”

Synamedia has 30+ years’ experience in video security solutions and developed the longest unhacked solution on the market. Since its inception, Synamedia’s operational security team has brought many criminals to the attention of law enforcement officials. Synamedia protects approximately $70 billion in operator revenues every year.