By Pramit Kumar

Tell us about your company and its vision?
Irdeto is the world leader in digital platform security. We protect digital platforms and assets across multiple industries, such as media & entertainment, payments & banking, and automotive. Our solutions and services enable our customers to protect their brand and revenue, create new offerings and fight cybercrime. We help content owners and providers securely deliver media across all screens and devices in and out of the home. With nearly 50 years of expertise in security, Irdeto’s software security technology and cyber services protect over 5 billion devices for some of the world’s best known brands.

We believe our customers should feel confident and prepared, no matter what challenges they are faced with. The industry is evolving rapidly and operators and content owners need to evolve along with this to ensure a secure environment and seamless user experience. Developing a strong partnership with our customers means our tailored solutions will empower them to continually adapt and grow with the changing times. Irdeto’s mission is to secure the world’s digital platforms and build a secure future.

What are your expectations from India as a market?
We expect more and more Indian homes to move towards digital pay TV, whether direct-to-home or cable. India’s pay TV market will reach $18 billion in revenue by 2025 compared to $9.4 million in 2016, according to a report by Media Partners Asia. The same report indicated that by 2025, 70% of India’s pay TV base is estimated to be digitized, growing from 93 million subscribers to 129 million from 2016 to 2025.

Furthermore, as broadband connectivity improves, we expect more consumers to view content on their laptops and smartphones, which will lead to over-the-top (OTT) services picking up. A recent Nasscom and Akamai report claims India will have over 730 million internet users and 702 million smartphone users by 2020. With increased connectivity, we foresee that consumers will leverage the digital medium to fulfill their entertainment requirements.

Finally, we will see more movements and deployment of anti-piracy services as awareness of content piracy increases.

Future Expansion Plans for India
We already have a middleware development center in the Delhi office, supported by a large professional services team overlooking project implementation, project management, and customer support activities. In future, we will be strengthening and expanding our services and engineering teams in India.

What is your strategy to reach out to your customer base to position yourself as a credible organization in their minds?
We protect our customers’ businesses in the present and give them the flexibility and freedom to build a secure future by offering innovative, future-proof technology, an unparalleled breadth and depth of portfolio to meet their evolving security needs, and a long term partnership with a technology-agnostic and service-oriented approach. We believe that the best strategy is to provide robust, industry-leading solutions and services that is backed with excellent and proactive customer support.

At Irdeto, we have expertise in developing roadmaps for the future, keeping track of the latest industry trends, and investing heavily in our R&D. We have a rich heritage in the industry, are agile and know what to do when attacks happen. While many competitors touch on multiple product categories, we truly focus on security. It’s in our DNA, we’re the best at it and we can prepare businesses for the future. We think holistically with a true end-to-end solution and differentiate by having a 360 view of security that is as deep as it is comprehensive, and can actually leverage that view to solve business challenges and predict the challenges on the horizon. We establish long-term relationships with our customers through collaboration and open communication, and our team is an extension of their team. We provide our customers with tools for success and continually align our vision and theirs. Not only that, we also connect our customers to each other to share best practices.

How do you see the industry developing in the future?
We live in an increasingly connected world, and with the internet of things (IoT) expanding rapidly across the globe, exposure of consumers to security risks is escalating daily. We believe that privacy and protection against cyber criminals is fundamental to building a healthy and safe digital future. If a consumer is exposed to security weaknesses in devices and applications, it is an issue that affects everyday life, as much as it affects businesses.

Specific to India, the focus on the digitization of pay TV and increased uptake of OTT services mean that businesses will need to have the right technology in place to safeguard content, personal information, etc. As the broadcast and IP-connected worlds continue to converge, operators must be agile in offering innovative services across a wide range of devices and have a robust and flexible security strategy to acquire the premium content such as 4K. Irdeto Keys & Credentials provides a comprehensive and efficient approach to managing multiple security technologies while ensuring operators maintain full control over their platform delivery and technology choices.

In addition, with the ever increasing broadband access and the introduction of new devices that allow consumers to take content from the internet to their TV, it is much easier for consumers to watch pirated services. As a result, online piracy is moving away from control word sharing to today’s biggest threat: content redistribution over the internet. According to new data from Irdeto, today there are more than 2.7 million advertisements on e-commerce websites, including Amazon, eBay and Alibaba for illicit streaming devices. In a true cross-channel effort, these advertisements can also be found on social networks, including Facebook, Twitter and other prominent social media platforms. With Irdeto, providers are able to leverage patented, scalable watermarking detection technology as well as benefit from a suite of piracy control services designed to rapidly identify and disrupt all types of piracy. As an active provider of products and services against content redistribution, Irdeto is familiar with the evolving piracy landscape and has a proven track record in helping operators protect their brand and revenue streams against online piracy.

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