Video is the most efficient way for businesses to communicate.
Companies use video to easily share internal announcements, coordinate projects, onboard team members, and train new employees. From small businesses to large corporations, video enables teams to stay informed and coordinated.
Yet businesses need the ability to share videos privately. Security is essential for numerous video applications, from proprietary information and trade secrets to upcoming projects and marketing videos.
So, understandably, businesses are concerned about the privacy and security of the videos they share. Secure video sharing, unlike social media platforms, puts you in control of your content.
Top-notch private corporate video features include password protection, video login, and signed embed codes. We’ll cover six easy steps to securely share videos as a business in this complete guide.
The Importance of Sharing Corporate Video Privately
Video security and privacy is essential for maintaining the boundary between external and internal video content. External videos are used in marketing campaigns, landing pages, social media, and more.
Internal videos, on the other hand, are almost always intended for a specific group within the company. This group might be the executive team, a specific company location, new hires, freelancers, or anyone who needs secure access to your company’s videos.
A video hosting platform focused on secure video sharing for businesses will include password protection, dynamic watermarking, single sign-on, and viewer tracking features.
The Three Pillars of Secure Video Sharing
The difficulty in keeping video content secure is due to the multiple access points and potential privacy leaks. Therefore, your video security plan must address the following pillars.
Control Access
There are two access points at which you need to restrict access:
- Videos: Directly restrict access with password protection, login protection, IP address and location restriction, and single sign-on.
- Video Hosting Account: Use two-factor authentication (2FA) for all account logins to secure access to your video hosting account.
Prevent Leaks & Theft
This level of video security seeks to prevent those with legitimate access to videos from leaking or sharing content outside the organization.
- Secure Embed Codes: Prevent embed code redistribution with allowed domains or signed embed codes.
- Deter Theft: Dissuade screen recording by displaying the viewer’s information on-screen.
Audit Regularly
Regular auditing is essential. It will allow you to ensure unauthorized people haven’t gained access to video content and that those with access permission haven’t changed video privacy settings.
- Engagement Metrics: Real-time information on who is watching your videos and for how long.
- Viewer Access Logs: Track login behavior for login-protected videos.
- Account Audit Logs: Keep track of team member account activity.
This information should allow you to consider video security and how you might implement it for your business or organization. We’ll discuss how to implement this information for secure video sharing next.
How to Secure Video Content in 6 Steps
1. Determine the Level of Security You Require
The video security demands of every company will be unique because no two companies require exactly the same features. Use the following questions to determine the types of security and privacy features your business needs.
- How sensitive is the video content? How would your business be impacted if these videos leaked?
- Do you already have a website where you can embed these videos, or do you need a secure portal for your videos as well?
- Should viewers be able to access your videos seamlessly? Should videos be password protected or require login?
- Where do viewers need to access the video? Do viewers need access on the go or should access be restricted to certain locations, like the office?
- Who should have access to these videos at your company? Should videos be restricted to specific teams or locations?
The answers to these questions will largely determine the features you need to look for when shopping for a video hosting provider.
2. Choose Your Video Hosting Platform Wisely
Online video hosting services are not one-size-fits-all solutions.
Popular free options, like YouTube and TikTok, are designed for social sharing — the opposite of what you need for private, corporate video. A video hosting platform that focuses on video for business will offer greater control over your content.
Review the essential features of a secure video platform below, then make a list of the solutions your business needs. All of the following features are found on the SproutVideo platform.
Important Features of a Secure Video Platform:
- Two-Factor Authentication: Enable double account verification for login.
- Password Protected Video: Require a password to access video content.
- Secure Video Login: Create login credentials that are required to view videos.
- Signed Embed Codes: Prevent embed code theft. Once expired, the video can no longer play where embedded.
- Whitelist Access to Content: Control what IP addresses, domains, and geographic locations have access to your content.
- Single Sign-On (SSO): User authentication with one set of credentials. Connect your hosted video website (such as SproutVideo) with your Identity Provider.
- Dynamic Watermarking: Display the viewer’s email address, IP address, and session ID on the video to deter theft.
- Account Audit Log: Review team members’ changes to videos and privacy settings.
- Viewer Access Log: Track individual viewer engagement; see who accessed your videos and how much they watched.
3. Restrict Video Access
There are two levels of restricting video access:
- Restrict access using credentials
- Restrict access by location or network
Restrict Access to the Video
Your approach to restricting video access will depend on how you plan to share your video content.
- On your own website, including an intranet, Sharepoint, Squarespace, WordPress, etc.
- Video website via a video hosting service, like SproutVideo.
- A third-party location, like Notion, Confluence, or Asana.
If you plan to share videos on your website: does your website portal include page access controls?
If yes, manage your employees’ access credentials or profiles from your company’s content-sharing portal. This will create a more seamless viewing experience.
Additionally, consider whether those access controls are sufficient: will you require additional security measures for more granular access permissions? Combine additional restriction features such as:
Need a website for your videos? Hosted video websites provide a dedicated portal for your content.
Use login protection and password prediction to restrict access. Or, for serious security with a high-quality user experience, bring your Identity Provider and use single sign-on (SSO) with our hosted video websites.
Restrict Access by Location or Network
Once you have restricted access to videos directly, consider whether or not you need additional restrictions. For example, your website may require log in credentials. But anyone could still access the content if those credentials were shared outside the company.
To prevent this from happening, use IP address and geographic location restrictions. Doing so ensures that no one outside your organization can access the content even if they have the password or login credentials to load the page or video.
Example: A company might whitelist its computer network and the IP addresses of any remote employees. Computers outside those networks will be blocked from loading videos or live streams.
4. Deter Screen Recording & Downloads
How do you protect video content once someone has access? Deter screen recording and download theft with dynamic watermarking. The watermark changes positions regularly and displays the viewer’s email address, IP address, and session ID.
There are multiple ways to customize a dynamic watermark on the SproutVideo platform. You can alter the opacity of the background, select the position change interval, prevent the watermark from covering center-focused content, and more.
Example: A video embedded on a landing page intended for new employees could include password protection, dynamic watermarking, and IP address restriction. This stack of security measures ensures the viewer must have a password to watch, the watermark deters recording by revealing the viewer’s information on-screen, and only whitelisted networks of computers will be able to play the video.
5. Safeguard Embed Codes
Unless preventative measures are in place, it is relatively easy to locate an embed code on a webpage to copy and paste it on another site. There are two major ways to prevent this:
- Domain restriction automatically checks the URL where your embed code is located to ensure it’s approved. The video won’t load if it isn’t approved.
- Signed embed codes require a unique signing key to play the video. The video won’t load if the signing key is absent or incorrect.
While more technically advanced, signed embed codes can be used in more complex scenarios than allowed domains.
6. Track Viewer Activity
The final step is to audit your viewer records and account access logs on a regular basis. This will ensure your video privacy controls are continuing to work as expected.
Video hosting platforms with robust analytics, like SproutVideo, make it easy to periodically review who has been accessing your videos.
Firstly, tag viewers who have permission to watch the video. This will make it easy to identify them. Viewers accessing the video through login protection or single sign-on (SSO) are automatically tracked.
Regularly review your access log to check for anomalies. Look for unusual email addresses, locations, IP addresses, or viewing patterns. If anything sticks out, temporarily revoke viewer access by changing the video password, privacy settings, or removing it from the page.
Note: In addition to engagement tracking, periodically review account audit logs. This information shows what team members have uploaded videos, edited privacy settings, and more.
As a communications solution, securely sharing video is easy, effective, and can potentially increase your company’s bottom line. Yet to be beneficial, strong video security and privacy are essential.
A video hosting platform built for businesses, like SproutVideo, includes everything you need to securely share video, monitor users, and improve viewer engagement.
