7 Best Practices For Secure Video Hosting

Video content is the most integral part of communication and business strategies in today's fast-moving digital world. However, the security aspect of video content gets overlooked sometimes. 74% of organizations say that they are vulnerable to insider threats.

Imagine internal data getting leaked or breached, causing irreparable reputation damage, substantial legal repercussions, and loss of invaluable intellectual property. In April 2024, it was recorded that more than 35 million records were breached. Such risks can be avoided by secure video hosting and management.

In this blog, we will explore the concept of secure video hosting, why you need it, the 7 best practices for protecting your video content, and the criteria for selecting the best video hosting platform. So, let's not wait any longer and jump right into it.

What is secure video hosting?

In simple words, secure video hosting is the act of securely uploading, storing, managing, and delivering videos on servers. The servers can be third-party or private. The deployment can vary from cloud and on-premises to SaaS.

Secure online video hosting is beneficial for businesses with video-intensive operations because it offers additional features such as analytics, branding, and white-labeling. Most companies have various needs apart from core security requirements that a video hosting platform fulfills.

Organizations use video hosting platforms to host, manage, and share videos. These platforms come with security features to protect data. Video hosting platforms have made video content security, management, and shareability easy. Not just an IT guy but any individual, such as a corporate communications professional, HR manager, content manager, or records specialist using a video content platform, can easily handle videos themselves.

Let’s see how secure video hosting beneficial and what consequences is you can face if you ignore it.

Why Do You Need Secure Video Hosting?

Secure video hosting is needed to secure enterprise video content that involves sensitive information, such as internal recorded meetings, video communications with investors, etc. It ensures that no tampering or unauthorized access can harm your data. Suppose you need to share an hour-long video recording but can't share the regular link. Otherwise, it will be available to the recipient at all times. And what if someone opens the recipient's desktop and accesses the video?

Secure video hosting will prevent these issues. Security features like limited-time sharing or view-bound links that expire later can ensure and enforce security. Additionally, you can make videos password-protected, taking advantage of an additional layer of data protection.

Let us now explore the consequences of not taking advantage of securely hosting enterprise video content in the following section.

Consequences of Not Securely Hosting Videos

Sometimes, companies tend to overlook the outcome of insecure video hosting, which can result in multiple consequences, such as:

• Data breaches due to unauthorized access.
• Loss of intellectual property due to improper security measures
• Operational disruptions due to security vulnerabilities cause financial losses.
• Legal and regulatory penalties due to non-compliance. Many regulations, such as GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS, require data to be kept encrypted.
• Increased costs caused by data recovery and data migration to a secure video hosting platform.
• Undermining customer trust leads to decreased engagement and loyalty.

Benefits of Secure Video Hosting

Secure video hosting has many benefits from an enterprise viewpoint. The direct benefits of securely hosting enterprise video content on a video hosting platform include:

• Ultimate data protection from unauthorized individuals, including hackers, spoofers, and other malicious actors.
• Prevention of the risk of data breaches as the enterprise video content remains safely stored within the video hosting platform.
• Compliance with different laws and regulations, such as GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA, and other data privacy laws.
• A showcase of the utmost commitment to data privacy and protection in a privacy-aware world where data privacy is considered a competitive advantage for businesses.

However, having a secure video hosting platform at your disposal is not just about keeping your video content safe. The following are other benefits of securely hosting videos on an enterprise video hosting platform:

• Granular video analytics to understand user behavior and improve decision-making.
• Integration with third-party systems to streamline workflows and reduce data duplication.
• Scalable storage to efficiently deal with increasing volumes of video content.
• Automated content management workflows to enhance security by reducing human error.
• Branding and customization to maintain the organization's look and feel.
• Interactivity elements to enhance audience engagement.

7 Best Practices for Secure Video Hosting

The following are the best practices for secure video hosting that organizations should adopt for high-level security:

1. Implement Strong Access Controls

Setting and implementing access control is crucial in securing your content. As an organization, you must implement role-based access control (RBAC), which means setting accesses based on roles. For example, only the board of directors or senior HR professionals can access the Board of Directors meetings folder.

It is important to know who can access your video content. For example, daily marketing team scrums can be accessed by all levels of marketing employees but not by other departments. This will be achieved by allowing a specific user group without letting others.

Once you set up roles, you can effectively limit what users can do and anticipate their behavior based on their role, not just within the platform but across the whole organization. It will give you control over who can be just a viewer, who can be a contributor, who can be a moderator, and so on. These granular access controls will prevent unauthorized access.

To read more on RBAC, click here.

2. Use Encryption for Data Protection

You can safeguard data using encryption as it provides an added layer of security. These days, companies need encryption for both data in transit and at rest. AES-256 and TLS 1.2 are industry-standard encryption protocols that provide the best secure encryption.

This means that when you video content is stored in the platform or being shared with someone, it remains protected in both cases.

3. Backup Your Content Regularly

It is a great practice to safeguard your content from getting lost by backing up. A famous proverb says, “Better safe than sorry,” which is what corporations need to do. It is better to put in a bit of effort to back up than to recreate lost content. Data loss or corruption erupts workflow and operational efficiency, sometimes resulting in financial impact and reputational damage.

Many video hosting platforms provide backup. When opting for a video hosting platform, it is crucial to consider a good backup because this task becomes automated. There are multiple ways to back up, such as multiple copies of data stored within the same data center or data replicated across geographically distant sites. This depends on the organization's needs and structure.

4. Educate Your Team on Security Best Practices

Educate each team member on security features, usage, and the benefits of implementing security measures. There are many features, such as encryption, RBAC, limited sharing, password protection, SSO support, custom security policy, geo-restrictions, media embedding, automatic login timeout, upload restrictions, and domain restrictions.

You should hold training sessions to inform everyone about using these security features correctly. Incorporating this practice into company culture minimizes the risk of human error, often the weakest link in security systems.

5. Organize Content in Categories and Subcategories

Properly organizing your video content is not only essential for user experience but also for maintaining security. By categorizing and subcategorizing your content, you can control access more effectively.

Organized content will result in improved workflow and output. Finding relevant information is a piece of cake when you organize the content because the search takes less time. On the other hand, unorganized data makes retrieval time-consuming, impacting efficiency and output.

6. Impose Download Restrictions

What is the point of having a secure video hosting platform when you cannot restrict the downloading of your enterprise video content? A video that anyone can download can spread like wildfire and can get into the wrong hands in no time. Would you want your internal company communications videos to land on your competitor's systems? You wouldn't.

Impose download restrictions on your sensitive enterprise video content so that you can always have peace of mind that no one, whether internal or external to your organization, can download your videos to make them available for others who were not meant to watch them.

7. Monitor Activities in Real Time

User activities inside your secure video hosting platform need to be tracked regularly to ensure the security of your enterprise video content in real-time. Tracking who and when users access your videos can inform you of trends indicating unauthorized use or security threats.

It is always best to set real-time activity alerts for each activity happening inside your video hosting platform, whether someone is accessing the platform, watching the video, annotating it, or performing any other activity not meant to be performed by that user without your approval.

The above best practices for secure video hosting will help you maintain a safe environment for your enterprise video content.

Criteria for Selecting the Best Video Hosting Platform

Using a secure online video hosting platform is the easiest way to ensure security. Since we have looked at the best practices for secure video hosting, let us briefly see the critical factors to consider when selecting the best video hosting platform. It includes:

1. Security and Privacy Measures
2. Scalability and Performance
3. Engagement and Analytics
4. Customization and Branding Options
5. Content Organization
6. Metadata Management
7. Deployment Options

To read more on this, check out our blog on Choosing the Right Video Hosting Platform for Business.

People Also Ask

Why is secure video hosting essential?

It is essential as it protects data from unauthorized access and tampering. Additionally, using a hosting platform for video content security results in multiple other benefits, such as granular video analytics, integration with third-party systems, scalable storage, automated content management workflows, customization, and interactivity elements.

What is a video hosting platform?

A video hosting platform facilitates the hosting, organization, and protection of enterprise video content. This platform handles video content upload, storage, management, and delivery.

What features and capabilities should a secure video hosting platform have?

A secure platform must have encrypted video sharing, temporary video sharing, password-protected video sharing, user authentication using identity and access management (IAM), granular role-based access control mechanism, custom security policy, IP and location restrictions, secure media embedding, redaction, and download restrictions.

What are the best practices for secure video hosting?

Best practices for secure video hosting include implementing strong access controls, using encryption for data protection, backing up your content regularly, educating your team on security best practices, organizing content in categories and subcategories, creating playlists to increase watch time, and tracking video performance and audience insights.

How do you securely share a video or media?

A video can be securely shared in several ways, such as using a secure platform, implementing strong access controls, limiting downloads, tracking activity, and