The global live-streaming market is expected to reach $247 billion by 2027.
It’s not hard to understand why marketers and brands are hopping on the bandwagon as a result. However, the main obstacle to live-streaming remains the technical aspect.
While live-streaming is an incredibly profitable endeavor for various industries, including e-sports, telehealth, and webinars, it primarily serves as one of the best ways to connect with your audience.
However, it remains imperative to ensure your live streams are secure. In this article, we’ll look at some of the most important steps any individual or business should use to live stream securely.
In this Article:
🌐 A Dedicated Internet Connection
The average live stream user encounters a delay of up to 30-90 seconds, which is practically forever in internet time. And most users decide within the first 30 seconds if they want to continue watching a stream or not. Regular connections often have you sharing bandwidth with multiple people in your neighborhood. This means your connection ebbs and flows according to the time of day and traffic. This means lost viewership and potential customers.
✅ Solution: Treat streaming as a mission-critical process. Forget Wi-Fi and get an Ethernet connection with a streaming bitrate of no more than 50% of your available upload bandwidth capacity. In practical terms, let’s say you run an online speed test and get an upload speed of 2 MBPS. You should configure your audio and video bitrate so that it never exceeds 1 MBPS for optimal performance.
🪙 Token-Based Authentication Systems
Imagine spending time and money on a live stream designed for maximum engagement only to have the stream hijacked by strangers and bad actors. This is a massive waste of time and resources and hurts your revenue.
✅ Solution: Use token-based authentication systems. A token-based system protects your stream against unauthorized actors by validating the identity of every single user before they enter your stream. They are given a dynamic key that is valid for a specific duration of time, after which the playback URL becomes completely unavailable and useless.
Dynamic token systems are common with streaming platforms that are ISO 27001 certified. This certification assures you that all processes and information security practices meet the ISO 27001 standard.
🔐 Payment Encryption Technology
Studies show that modern consumers spent $3.76 billion on live streaming software in 2021 alone. That number has only increased since then due to changes made in internet infrastructure following the pandemic. With more people turning to live streaming than ever before, nearly 57% of streamers generated some form of revenue with their content.
Live-streaming is a fantastic revenue stream for anyone considering webinars, debates, artistic performances, and even Q&A sessions. The most important step in monetizing your live stream is to have a secure and reliable payment platform that assures your customers that their money is safe during transactions. Buggy and glitchy payment options can leave you culpable to a host of legal and brand problems that might be difficult to recover from.
✅ Solution: Use SSL encryption-based platforms that are bundled with PCI DSS compliance protocols to assure your business partners and consumers that everything is copacetic.
🛅 Exercise Copyright Control
There are several free, user-friendly platforms available right now that seem like fantastic options for anyone deciding to live stream. However, they strip away your copyright the moment your content is broadcast and open you up to a Pandora’s Box of legal problems. You are not protected in the event individuals make copies of your stream and decide to distribute them. All of your original content can then be branded as their own and shared on social media without any permission required on your end.
✅ Solution: Select a video streaming platform that allows you to retain the rights to the content you stream. You need to be able to command what you stream and how long you can stream. Even who can watch, how long your videos can be, and even caption your stream to ensure it reaches more users speaking different languages.
🔒 Multi DRM Technology
Recording a live stream has a very low barrier of entry. Anyone can do it. Not just professionals. This means that anyone can record your stream, snap their own watermark on it and call it their own.
✅ Solution: Use DRM technology. This is an innovative technology that allows you to exercise screen record protection and watermark protection across your videos. Screen record protection protects your content by not allowing others to record your screen as they’re presented with a black screen if any recording tools are detected. Watermarking allows you to protect your content by labeling a live stream with the IP address, name, and any further personal details of the customer viewing the stream. This allows you considerable control over marking your content in the event it is distributed online without your consent and allows you to take legal actions to further deter similar actors.
🎯 Final Thoughts
Secure video streaming is important for safeguarding sensitive or confidential information and protecting the privacy and safety of participants. It also helps to maintain the integrity of the live stream and ensure that it is delivered to the intended audience without interference. OneStream Live is a cloud-based live streaming solution that offers a unique Password Protection feature. With this feature, companies and individuals can broadcast their private events through live streaming without any worries about stream security. This security setting permits you to lock your embedded code to work on allowed domains only. So, while live streaming with OneStream Live, you have one less thing to worry about.
OneStream Live is a cloud-based live streaming solution to create, schedule, and multistream professional-looking live streams across 45+ social media platforms and the web simultaneously. For content-related queries and feedback, write to us at [email protected]. You’re also welcome to Write for Us!