Pexip Cloud Live — security overview

As subscribers of the Pexip Cloud Video Service employ the Pexip Cloud Live Streaming and Recording feature, security compliance groups within the Enterprise may inquire about how secure the technology is. This article seeks to address common questions around this feature. To view the strict security standards that the Pexip Cloud Video Service adheres to, go to Certifications.

  1. The Pexip Cloud Streaming and Recording feature simply serves as a mechanism by which a user can send media traffic from a Pexip Cloud Virtual Meeting Room (VMR) to a compatible Streaming Ingestion Service so that it can reach a mass audience. If the Ingestion Service also supports recording, the S+R feature can also be used to record and archive the VMR meeting session.

    • S+R capability is not enabled by default for a Company and the video subscribers under that Company. The end-client must order the S+R capability to be enabled for configuration setup, and then each individual video subscriber would need to manually set up the S+R integration to a supported Streaming Ingestion Service prior to being able to use the S+R capability.
    • When the S+R capability is used on a live VMR meeting, there is a clear visual indication on the VMR session itself ensuring that everyone on video in the meeting knows that the session is being streamed and possibly recorded.
    • When the S+R capability has been enabled and the video subscriber has set themselves up to be able to stream to a supported Streaming Ingestion Service, the video subscriber must consciously start the streaming session manually (ad-hoc) or by scheduling the start and stop times for the streaming session. Even in the case of a scheduled start/stop time for a streaming session, the video subscriber must press a button to confirm and begin the streaming session. There is no situation where the streaming session begins automatically; someone is always consciously choosing to start the streaming session.
  2. The Pexip Cloud Streaming and Recording feature uses the MCU platform supporting the Pexip Cloud VMR Service to send out to compatible Streaming Ingestion Services using Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) or Secure RTMP (RTMPS) traffic.

    • More information about RTMP and RTMPS can be found here. RTMP and RTMPS are quite standard protocol types used for Streaming purposes.
    • Each of the Services the Pexip Cloud S+R Service has been validated with are listed here. Each of these Services has their own security and privacy policies that users would have to agree to. These are not influenced by Pexip.
  3. The Pexip Cloud Streaming and Recording feature’s tightest integration is with YouTube Live! This is because YouTube, owned by Google, is familiar to a great many people who are familiar with its use, and there are well-documented instructions on how to use it for Streaming and Recording.

    • The steps to set up S+R integration from Pexip Cloud MyPages with the YouTube Live! Service are documented here. Integration steps for other Streaming Ingestion Services are documented here.
    • The instructions from YouTube itself detailing how to set it up for Streaming and Recording are here.
    • The S+R integration between Pexip Cloud MyPages and YouTube Live! sets up the recorded YouTube videos as having an Unlisted Privacy setting. This means that the video subscriber who owns the content from the VMR meeting session has a YouTube URL to distribute as they see fit for the intended audience. The video cannot be found via a search on YouTube unless the owner later decides the make the video Public. The owner also has the option of signing into YouTube and marking the video completely Private, or downloading and then deleting the recorded video so that it no longer exists in YouTube’s Cloud. The owner can then take the downloaded video and archive/distribute the recording as they see fit. More about YouTube video privacy settings can be found here.
  4. If none of the common Streaming Ingestion Services listed in Section (2) above are acceptable, the video subscriber/client can choose to use their own Streaming Ingestion Infrastructure that they manage and have direct control over. If the video subscriber/customer using the S+R feature wants to provide their own Streaming Ingestion Service rather than one of the Cloud-based options we have tested with and know we can support, they can configure Pexip Cloud MyPages and its S+R capability to send the media stream from the VMR to an Enterprise’s private Streaming Ingestion Service so long as it is publicly reachable over the Internet. The video subscriber/customer would need to manually configure a custom S+R profile in MyPages to point to the private Streaming Ingestion Service.

The Pexip Service video platform adheres to strict security standards established by various risk management frameworks. These are listed below.

Certifications

The Pexip Cloud Video Service holds the following security certifications:

  • ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certification
  • GDPR (EU Regulation 2016/679) compliance
  • CSA STAR Registry Level One certification
  • SOC2/SSAE16 compliant data centers