AES Video Encryption – The Ultimate Guide to Streaming Video Security [2024 Update]

The global live video streaming market is predicted to be worth $129.80 billion in 2024 and grow to $865.85 billion by 2034, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.90%. The rise of this industry has coincided with the growth of the internet and the trend towards virtual event attendance, distance learning, remote work, and the development of video for marketing and sales.

The downside to the explosive growth of live streaming is that cybersecurity threats are also rising. Security firms are reporting an increase in a variety of different cybersecurity threats in 2024, such as: 

• Piracy
• Hacking
• Digital attacks

The good news is that there are serval video security solutions you can implement to protect your content against cybersecurity threats, including AES video encryption.

In this post, we will examine AES video encryption in detail. We will discuss what video streaming encryption is, who should use it, and how it works. We’ll also mention a few additional video security methods and see how they compare against AES video encryption. Let’s see how AES can protect your content against rising cybersecurity threats.

Table of Contents

• What is AES Video Encryption?
• Who Needs AES Video Encryption?
• Benefits of Encrypting Video Streams
• Potential Vulnerabilities and Limitations of AES Encryption
• Technical Overview of AES Video Encryption: Development and Strength
• Does AES Impact Video Latency
• AES-256 vs. AES-128
• How to Encrypt a Video with AES
• Additional Streaming Cybersecurity Measures
• FAQ
• Conclusion

What is AES Video Encryption?

AES stands for “Advanced Encryption Standard.” TechTarget says AES encryption is “a symmetric block cipher chosen by the U.S. government to protect classified information and is implemented in software and hardware throughout the world to encrypt sensitive data.”

During live video streaming, broadcasters can use AES video encryption for secure streaming. When the video is encrypted, a special key scrambles the video content. 

Viewers can’t access the video unless they have the correct digital access key, and if they try to intercept it, they’ll see a scrambled mess of useless data. Authorized viewers can access AES-encrypted video via their web browser and a secure HTTPS connection.

The encryption process may be invisible, but it provides a significant layer of protection against interception and piracy. Video streaming encryption works behind the scenes to ensure that video content is accessed in the right location by the right people who have access to it.

Who Needs AES Video Encryption?

If you need to protect your valuable video content from being viewed or stolen by unauthorized people, AES video encryption is for you. For example, if you have private internal content or if you sell video courses online, your videos must remain exclusive and be accessible only to your subscribers or your internal team.

AES often works with other security measures to keep your videos as secure as possible. That way, you can keep private internal content private and retain the monetization value of your video content.

Although anyone can use AES streaming encryption, here are a few types of businesses and industries that benefit from this security measure:

• Government organizations
• Enterprise businesses and SMBs
• OTT and entertainment companies
• Education and eLearning
• Live event streaming

Anyone who wants to keep their OTT streaming content from being copied should consider this security measure. In August 2024, online piracy is estimated to cost about $73.7 billion. That’s why Netflix uses AES encryption to protect its content catalog, making it nearly impossible for hackers to intercept or tamper with their streams. Learning platforms like Coursera also use AES video encryption to protect premium courses and give access only to paying users.

Benefits of Encrypting Video Streams

Numerous benefits come with encrypting your video streams. Being aware of these benefits makes it easy to choose to use AES video encryption on your content.

Benefit #1: Stop “Man-in-the-Middle” (MITM) Hacks

AES video encryption prevents “Man-in-the-Middle” (MITM) style hacking attacks. In this attack, someone intercepts network traffic to steal sensitive data.

You may have heard that using public, unsecured WiFi networks can be dangerous, and MITM attacks are why. For example, if you log in to your bank at the local Starbucks, you might have exposed your financial details to a hacker.

In general, these types of attacks are relatively simple. Tools such as packet sniffers are widely available, and anyone with little technical knowledge can download and get one running easily. More concerning, however, are the professional hackers. These individuals look to gather sensitive information to resell on the dark web.

Akamai, a top-tier content delivery network that partners with many streaming platforms, reports that credential theft for online video subscriptions is an issue that compromises millions of accounts every year.

AES video encryption allows you to completely prevent these types of attacks. Anyone snooping on your streams will be halted by AES encryption. This protects you against piracy, data theft, intellectual property appropriation, and more.

Benefit #2: Hardware and Software Implementation

AES video encryption takes place at both the hardware and software levels. 

Implementing at both the hardware and software level creates an extremely secure and robust security protocol that is hard for hackers to get through. It is slightly more complicated to implement with software, but it is more than possible.

Benefit #3: Longer Key Sizes

AES encryption uses longer encryption key sizes than other types of technology you can use to protect your content. The average key size is 128, 192, or 256 bits. Using higher and various key lengths helps make the AES algorithm more secure and robust.

Benefit #4: Commonly Used

AES encryption isn’t just for video files. It is used for a wide variety of different use cases, including: 

• Financial transactions
• Wireless communications
• Encrypted data storage
• E-business transactions

Benefit #5: Greater Control Over Who Access Your Content

One of the biggest benefits of encrypting your video content is having more control over who views your content. This can allow you to ensure that only those users you want access to your content have access. 

This is important if you are trying to monetize your content. You need to keep the content secure if you want to succeed in making money from your content. Your content needs to be exclusive to get people to pay subscription fees, for example.

Potential Vulnerabilities and Limitations of AES Encryption

While it’s true that AES encryption offers all of the above mentioned benefits and protection for video and streaming content, it’s not fully immune to certain vulnerabilities. Most notable are:

• Replay Attacks: Unauthorized users try to intercept and decrypt the data and gain access. To stop these attacks, most streaming platforms implement tokenized security, making each watching session unique, so it’s more difficult for attackers to reuse the data.
  
• Key extraction: Attackers try to get the encryption key directly from a viewing device to access the content. You can mitigate this risk by regularly rotating the keys in use and storing them in hardware security modules (HSMs).

Another risk you must consider is physical vulnerabilities, like screen recording. It completely bypasses the AES encryption and grabs the video content straight from the user’s screen. Usually, the solution is as simple as incorporating watermarks in your videos. A more sophisticated solution is screen capture blocking, which stops users from screen recording the part of the screen that contains sensitive information.

Technical Overview of AES Video Encryption: Development and Strength

AES was originally released in 2002 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. It’s meant to be as secure as possible, free, and relatively easy for programmers to implement. Since then, AES video encryption has proven to be a strong and reliable security method.

It’s still widely used in banking, government, military, and business because it aligns with strict compliance standards such as GDPR, HIPAA, and SOC 2. These regulations require strong encryption while transferring and storing highly sensitive personal information and data.

AES is free, open-source, and built-in to the hardware and software of many devices. It uses the Rijndael algorithm and symmetrical block ciphers to encrypt the content. It’s a complex repeating process of mathematical substitution that turns content into jumbled data, which is completely worthless unless you apply the proper key. This brings up the need for proper key management.

AES Key Management

Key management is the practice of securely handling the AES encryption keys during their lifecycle in a way that maintains data security and integrity. Best practices involve regular key rotations every 30 to 90 days to minimize the risk of the key being compromised.

A good security practice is setting a key expiration date or, more precisely, giving the key a specific lifespan. This limits the potential damage of key exposure because the key becomes invalid after a while and will need replacing.

Another top tip is key storage. You must always store the AES encryption keys in hardware security modules (HSMs) or key management systems (KMSs). These secure environments add extra security and prevent unauthorized access.

Does AES Impact Video Latency

As effective as AES is in protecting your video content, using larger key sizes like AES-256 can make the encryption and decryption process a bit slower. This lag is mostly noticeable when watching videos on older devices or if your network has limited bandwidth.

You can easily fix this issue by using Content Delivery Networks or CDNs. They spread the encrypted content across multiple servers located near viewers, which in turn speeds up the data transfer and reduces latency.

CDNs also pair up seamlessly with HTTPS protocols to maintain the integrity of the AES encryption during streaming. To give viewers the best user experience while still maintaining a high level of security with AES video encryption, do the following:

1. Use AES-128 for standard content to minimize processing impact.
2. Implement CDNs for faster encryption and decryption.
3. Use adaptive bitrate streaming for seamless playback.
4. Ensure compatibility with modern browsers and devices.
5. Regularly rotate encryption keys to maintain security without affecting performance.
6. Test for latency and adjust settings for different user conditions.

AES-256 vs. AES-128

In general, AES-128 video encryption should be secure enough for most use cases. If you’re sending particularly sensitive information, you can use AES-256. The only drawback is that encoding and playing back this video will require a little more CPU resources from your viewers.

However, in 2015, the NSA stopped recommending the use of 128-bit keys for AES encryption and started recommending 256. Today, most professionals recommend 256-bit keys as a matter of course. Most modern hardware should have no trouble at all decoding video encrypted with a 256-bit key.

Which key size you use mostly depends on how sensitive your video content is. AES-128 is pretty secure and offers good performance on most devices for securing standard video content or non-sensitive data. However, if you want to protect premium or monetized video content, it’s best to use AES-256. It provides stronger security but can slightly impact video performance on older devices.

AES vs. Other Encryption Methods

While there are plenty of other encryption methods available like DES, RSA, and 3DES, AES is still the preferred one for video streaming. Compared to the others, it offers better security and is more efficient.

For example, the DES keys are 64-bit, 128-bit, and 192-bit, so the encryption and decryption processes are a lot slower than AES encryption. RSA is often used for secure key exchange in video streaming workflows, but it’s slower, and unlike AES, it’s unsuitable for large-scale data encryption.

But these encryption methods aren’t mutually exclusive, and you can use them side by side. For example, RSA and AES are often used together for key exchange in secure communication protocols like SSL/TLS.

How to Encrypt Video with AES

Implementing AES video encryption sounds rather technical, but if you’re using the right secure video streaming platform, it’s as simple as a single click of a button on your video dashboard. The process is completely invisible to both you and your viewers and looks a little like this:

1. Encryption starts in the background on ingest servers, where an AES algorithm scrambles the raw video data.
2. The encrypted video is then sent to a CDN.
3. It remains on the CDN nodes, where it stays encrypted until it reaches the user’s device.
4. Then, the correct AES key decrypts the video and turns the scrambled data back into watchable content.
5. All of this happens in real time to minimize latency.

As we said, knowing how to encrypt a video isn’t something you need to worry about, as most major OTT platforms already provide you with some level of encryption measures. Here is a little comparison of what sort of encryption you can expect from the leading streaming platforms.

AES Encryption on Dacast

Dacast has recently reintroduced AES streaming for our users in the new iteration of the platform. Now, we use special servers to encrypt the data before it is even sent to the video player, in addition to encrypting the video player itself.

To enable AES encryption for new or existing VOD files on your Dacast account, just follow these steps:

1. Sign in to your Dacast dashboard
2. Choose the video that you would like to add AES encryption for
3. Click the “Security” tab on the top menu bar
4. Scroll to the “Advanced Encryption Standard” (AES) section and toggle to the right to turn it on
5. Click the purple “Save” button

Feel free to review the other security options on the page while enabling AES to configure your security settings properly for maximum video content protection.

Additional Streaming Cybersecurity Measures

In addition to online video encryption using AES, you can take other measures to make your content more secure. Several more advanced security protocols perfectly complement AES and add extra layers of protection to the video content. The most popular ones include:

• Password protection: Add a “first line of defense” against unauthorized viewers by requiring a password to access your content;
• Geo-restrictions: Restrict access based on viewers’ physical location;
• Domain/referrer-restrictions: Restrict access based on the website that your player is embedded in (i.e. limit access to players embedded in your website only);
• Tokenization: Limit access to viewers that have the specified digital credentials by generating time-sensitive tokens that prevent unauthorized sharing of links or session hijacking;
• Watermarking: Embed a visible or invisible mark into the video that prevents pirating, helps track any leaks, and stops unauthorized sharing.
• Blockchain Verification: This technology can help you track the ownership of any video content and give access only to authorized users.
• Multi-factor Authentication (MFA): This step requires viewers to provide additional verification, such as a second password, before accessing protected video content.

If you’re using a video paywall to monetize your content, it is important to make it absolutely secure so that your viewers’ financial information is never compromised.

FAQ

1. What is AES video?

An AES video is a video stream protected using the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), a powerful encryption method that secures content by scrambling the data. This process ensures only viewers with the correct decryption key can access the content, protecting it from unauthorized access and interception. AES encryption is widely used in industries like entertainment, education, and government to safeguard sensitive or high-value video content. Without the proper key, intercepted AES-encrypted video appears as unusable, scrambled data. This makes AES video encryption a critical tool for preventing piracy and ensuring content privacy.

2. Is AES encryption compatible with all browsers and devices?

AES encryption is widely compatible across modern browsers and devices, including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. However, the streaming platform used to deliver AES-encrypted content must support secure playback methods, like HTTPS connections. Older devices or outdated browsers may experience compatibility issues, so viewers should use the latest browser versions for the best experience.

3. Does AES encryption increase streaming latency?

AES encryption has a minimal effect on streaming latency for most users, especially when optimized through a content delivery network (CDN). The encryption and decryption processes are efficient and designed to run smoothly on most devices, though larger key sizes like AES-256 may slightly increase processing time. By using a streaming platform optimized for AES encryption, latency impact is typically negligible, ensuring a seamless viewing experience.

4. What is the difference between AES encryption for video and AES encryption for other data?

AES encryption for video streaming specifically secures the video content as it moves from servers to viewers, often paired with secure delivery methods like HTTPS. In contrast, AES encryption for other data, such as files or emails, focuses on protecting information stored on devices or in transit between users. Video AES encryption requires specialized delivery protocols to maintain real-time playback and low latency, whereas general AES encryption often prioritizes static data security.

5. How secure is AES-128 compared to AES-256 for live streaming?

Both AES-128 and AES-256 are highly secure and suitable for live streaming, but AES-256 provides stronger encryption with its larger key size, making it more resistant to brute-force attacks. While AES-128 is typically sufficient for most streaming needs, AES-256 is recommended for sensitive or high-value content due to its enhanced security. Some streaming platforms allow users to choose between the two, balancing performance and security based on specific needs.

6. Can AES encryption protect my video from all forms of piracy?

AES encryption effectively protects against many forms of piracy, such as unauthorized access and interception during streaming. However, it cannot prevent screen recording, where an authorized user records video playback from their device. To mitigate this, AES encryption is often paired with additional security features, such as dynamic watermarking or DRM, which help deter and track unauthorized copies.

7. Do I need to manage encryption keys for AES video encryption myself?

Most streaming platforms handle encryption key management for AES, so users do not need to manage or distribute keys manually. Key management is automated and secure, typically involving rotating keys at set intervals to enhance security. If users prefer more control, some advanced platforms may offer customizable options for key management and rotation settings.

Conclusion

Now that you’re familiar with AES video encryption and how it works, we hope that you consider using it as part of your video hosting security strategy.

Encrypted streaming is truly one of the best methods broadcasters and businesses can use today to protect their video content.

At Dacast, we offer AES video encryption in addition to secure video upload, password-protected video hosting, and other innovative security features with our streaming solution.

To learn more about our video platform’s security features, please check out our privacy and security page or contact our dedicated 24/7 customer support team.

We invite you to try these and our other private video hosting tools risk-free for 14 days. Sign up today to start your trial. No credit card is required.

Get Started For Free

For regular tips on live streaming and exclusive offers, we invite you to join our LinkedIn group.