How Secure is Microsoft Azure Cloud for Video Hosting and Streaming?

Slowly but surely, businesses find themselves migrating their resources to the cloud. Nearly 88% of surveyed business decision-makers consider the cloud as a cornerstone of their digital strategy.

Cloud hosting appeals to organizations as it is a cost-effective and scalable infrastructure where they don't have to manage the hardware, resources, and security. But that doesn't mean it's secure by default. According to an IBM report, roughly 45% of all data breaches are cloud-based.

It's for these reasons that more than half of organizations worldwide opt for cloud giants like Azure due to their extensive Azure Cloud security capabilities.

The same goes for video hosting. Rather than dealing with the hassle of on-premise infrastructure, organizations prefer using a trusted, compliant video hosting provider that they can keep their resources on with peace of mind.

But now that Azure Media Services is retiring, the question remains: how can organizations host their video content on Azure Cloud?

This blog will explore why businesses should consider Azure Cloud, why cloud security is important for cloud video hosting, and how organizations can use Azure-integrated video hosting platforms like VIDIZMO EnterpriseTube for on-demand and live video streaming.

What is Azure Cloud?

Microsoft Azure Cloud is a cloud platform developed by Microsoft that combines over 200 products and services under one roof. These products are offered to commercial, individual, and government sectors, such as Azure Commercial Cloud and Azure Government Cloud.

What is Video Hosting?

Video hosting is the act of storing and managing video content on an online video platform so that it remains secure and can be shared or streamed to a desired audience.

What is Video Streaming?

Video streaming is the method of delivering video content from a video streaming server to a viewer's device without the need to download it. This is possible through the use of online video platforms that allow secure streaming with encryption, access control, and other security capabilities.

How Secure is Azure Cloud

When it comes to security, Azure Cloud boasts some of the most impressive security capabilities. It's no wonder that 56% of businesses choose Azure as their cloud provider. By default, the platform is secured with AES encryption and TLS 1.2. But it doesn't stop there. The entire platform is protected by a set of security measures called Azure Cloud Security.

Azure Cloud Security is a complete framework for securing data stored in the cloud. Microsoft has taken great measures to build layered defenses for Azure with solutions that target specific threat vectors affecting cloud storage and infrastructure.

Currently, Azure Cloud Security comprises the following solutions under one umbrella:

Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Key Vault
Azure DDoS Protection
Azure Information Protection
Application Gateway
Microsoft Azure Attestation
Azure Confidential Ledger
Microsoft Defender for IoT

These solutions provide protection against specific threats like DDOS attacks, application or infrastructure code vulnerability, tamper mitigation, and more.

Risks of Unsecured Cloud Storage for Video Hosting and Streaming

Cloud technologies have taken the digital world by storm, with ninety-four percent of decision-makers in the US using at least one type of cloud deployment.

These days, many organizations are considering migrating their videos to the cloud because of compliance, governance, and security headaches. They want a secure video hosting and video streaming solution that lets them stream without worrying about maintaining the infrastructure necessary to keep it safe.

But the problem doesn't end with merely opting for cloud hosting. Not all cloud providers have the same level of security. Choosing the right cloud service provider is of utmost importance because unsecured cloud storage has the following risk factors:

Data Breaches

Data breaches are a major concern for organizations as they can have severe financial and reputational consequences. According to the IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report, the average cost of a data breach is 4.45 million USD.

Apart from the financial damages, data breaches cause substantial reputational damage to organizations. As a result, they can lose business contracts and face loss in revenue and customers.

Thus, in a matter like this, organizations cannot risk having a weak and unsecured cloud environment.

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Attacks

DDoS attacks are on the rise, according to Cloudflare, which reported that it had to mitigate 4.5 million attacks in the first quarter of 2024 alone.

The colossal number of requests service requests in a DDoS attack disrupts regular operations in a cloud environment by overwhelming it with traffic. It floods the server so that it cannot process genuine requests.

A successful DDoS attack on a weak cloud environment that does not emphasize cloud security can lead to damages for a company, including loss of revenue, increased costs for recovery and risk mitigation, disruption of operations due to downtime, etc.

Malware Infections

Malware infections and attacks are becoming increasingly common for businesses that are using cloud-based apps.

For instance, research shows that 40% of malware downloads in the healthcare industry are because of cloud apps.

Cloud applications and service providers that do not take adequate anti-malware measures can put a business in difficult situations. This can result in data theft, financial loss, and system failures.

Insider Threats

Your infrastructure is only as secure as its weakest link. In some cases, this can be the organization's own personnel that disclose information intentionally or unintentionally due to a lack of access controls or other security measures.

In a survey that asked organizations where their users kept PII (Personally Identifiable Information), IP (Intellectual Property), and other critical business information, 54% of respondents said they were kept in cloud-hosted applications.

Insider threats are difficult to take care of in less secure cloud storage, as tracking the source or implementing security policies without access controls is difficult, if not impossible.

An infographic showing top threats faced by unsecure cloud storage that Azure Cloud Security defends against.

How Does Azure Cloud Protect Against Unsecured Cloud Threats?

Whether it's secure video streaming or storing critical data, organizations demand a robust infrastructure that protects against ever-evolving cyber threats, provides failsafe and disaster recovery, and ensures compliant data handling.

Regular Monitoring of Infrastructure and Servers

Microsoft has over 300 data centers (and growing) located in various regions globally in 140 countries. The high-availability geographically-distributed infrastructure of Azure Cloud is continuously monitored 24/7 all year round with multiple layers of security in place.

The data centers' physical security complies with industry standards like ISO/IEC 27001. Regular penetration testing is conducted to improve the Azure Cloud security controls in place. Currently, Microsoft ensures infrastructure monitoring via the following stages:

Configuration and Change Management
Vulnerability Management
Vulnerability Scanning
Protective Monitoring
Incident Management

Aside from this, Microsoft also has an action plan in place for the physical security of data center locations including access requests mechanisms, perimeter building, equipment disposal, and physical security reviews. Through this process, Microsoft ensures that the Azure Cloud storage and infrastructure is well maintained and protected.

Protection Against DDoS Attacks

To protect against DDoS attacks, Microsoft Azure Cloud offers real-time threat protections with Azure DDoS Protection. This service includes real-time traffic monitoring with automatic threat mitigation capabilities.

During and after a possible attack, Azure offers alerts, analytics, and metrics to provide to keep users up-to-date with the threats they face and how they can be mitigated. Users can also choose to opt for Azure's DDoS Rapid Response Team that can help with attack investigation and post-attack analysis.

Centralized Identity Management Using Azure Active Directory

As it stands, no Microsoft personnel has access to any Azure Cloud customer data. Microsoft has taken great care to ensure that Azure Cloud management and storage are always in the hands of the end user so that no external stakeholder, not even Microsoft, can tamper with it.

Using Azure Cloud, you can ensure that only your authorized team has access to your data and applications through identity and access management (IAM). Azure Active Directory (AD) is an IAM solution offered by Microsoft for single sign-on and multi-factor authentication.

Intelligent Threat Protection Using Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides centralized security controls and Azure Cloud management in a centralized service. Using Defender for Cloud, organizations can monitor their security posture, discover risks using cyberattack-path analysis, protect virtual machines, databases, and Azure Cloud storage with workload protection, and much more.

The best part about Microsoft Defender for Cloud is that it can be integrated with multi-cloud and hybrid environments. Organizations can mix and match different cloud providers or their private Azure Cloud with their on-premises video streaming server while getting broad protection from Microsoft Defender.

Data Protection Mechanisms

Azure Cloud has various security functionalities built-in for Azure Cloud storage data protection. Users can benefit from these to completely secure video content and other data from any possible leakage, loss, or damage:

Data Segregation: To ensure separation between customers in the multi-tenant environment, Azure uses logical isolation to create data segregation. Plus, the data processing is also conducted in an isolated environment. Azure services like Azure AD are used for that purpose.
Data Encryption: Azure provides data protection through encryption at rest aligned with 256-bit AES standard and encryption in transit through TLS 1.2. You can even have double encryption by securely managing your keys using Azure Key Vault to encrypt your keys.
Data Redundancy: Azure storage offers high availability and disaster recovery of your data by allowing you to create backup redundant storage that can be maintained locally or in different zones or regions. Read about the storage redundancy option to learn more about what Azure offers in this domain.
Data Destruction: When a user stops using Azure Cloud or other Microsoft services in the cloud, strict standards for the deletion of data as well as physical destruction of decommissioned hardware. In addition, users can also request Microsoft to delete their data.

Why Integrate An Enterprise Video Platform with Azure Cloud for Secure Video Hosting and Streaming?

So far, we've explored how secure Azure Cloud is and how it can be a viable solution for secure video hosting. But what about using it for secure video streaming? Can you use Azure Cloud to stream videos?

The only native solution currently available, Azure Media Services is set to retire on June 30, 2024. Businesses that rely on Azure to deliver media to different devices and locations will need to consider an alternative for video transcoding, video streaming, and other media functions.

An alternative is to use an enterprise video platform that lets you integrate your storage from a cloud provider such as Azure Cloud and leverage it for video streaming. However, it is not easy to migrate an existing video platform to a new storage medium.

Out of the box, few enterprise video platforms support the flexibility to allow you to deploy on your existing cloud infrastructure such as your private Azure Cloud. In such cases, you're often forced to migrate your data from your existing cloud infrastructure and into your video platform and abandon the use of cloud storage altogether.

Luckily, there is a solution.

VIDIZMO EnterpriseTube is an end-to-end video hosting and streaming solution that lets users deploy on-premises, SaaS, their private commercial or government cloud, or even as a hybrid model.

VIDIZMO EnterpriseTube - Ready-Made Enterprise Video Platform in Azure Cloud

VIDIZMO EnterpriseTube is a Gartner-recognized online video platform that allows organizations to create a platform for secure video streaming and hosting with flexible deployment methods to stream and manage live and on-demand videos publicly or privately.

EnterpriseTube keeps your videos easily accessible in a centralized repository on their private cloud provider, such as Azure Cloud, AWS, and any other cloud provider of their choice. For government customers, EnterpriseTube can be deployed in Azure Government Cloud and AWS GovCloud.

Some of the key capabilities of VIDIZMO Enterprise include:

Live Streaming: Go live to an audience with support for Adaptive Bit Rate (ABR), Content Delivery Network (CDN), live analytics, live interactivity, and much more. You can even create your own video streaming server by setting up the encoder and publishing point.
Video-on-Demand Streaming: Enjoy secure streaming on any device or bandwidth conditions on an encrypted platform with accessibility features.
Video Content Management: Host, manage, stream, and share content in over 255 formats. Create multiple portals to serve content, create categories, set retention policies, and more.
Secure Embedding: Embed your videos securely with embed codes that prevent unauthorized downloads using hotlinking attempts.
Interactivity: Add in-video quizzes, surveys, forms, and handouts to your videos. For live streams, interact with viewers using Q&As, FAQs, live chat, and social media feeds.
Custom Branding: Create your own branded portal with customized branding options for logos, fonts, colors, and more with custom CSS styling.
SSO Integration: Allow users to authenticate themselves on your online video platform using SSO providers like Azure AD, Okta, Ping, and many more.
Granular Access Control: Define who can do what with your videos and media files. Set permissions by user, group, or Role-Based Access Control to define access levels.
Content Encryption: Keep your content secure with AES encryption and TLS 1.2 to keep videos secure throughout their lifecycle.
Limited Sharing: Share videos and other media with confidence using tokenized URLs that expire based on time and view limits.
DRM Integration: Add an extra layer of security using Digital Rights Management (DRM) with Microsoft Playready, Google Widevine, or Apple Fairplay to restrict unauthorized access and playback.
Detailed Analytics: Track viewer engagement and identify download attempts using media analytics to maintain control over your content distribution.
Category Access Rights: Limit access to specific content categories to authorized users by team, department, or any other criteria.
Automatic Transcription and Translation: Transcribe audio from media files in over 40 languages, translate in over 50 languages, and generate closed captions.
AI-Powered Search: Search for videos and other files using spoken words, faces, objects, OCR, and much more.

Deliver Secure Video Streaming with Azure Cloud Today

Choosing a secure video hosting solution and a secure cloud provider is crucial today, as cyber threats are constantly lurking around. Utilizing Azure Cloud, can provide organizations with the peace of mind that their video content is stored in a secure environment, protected from potential breaches and data loss.

By leveraging Azure Cloud Security, organizations can enjoy secure video streaming without compromising sensitive information.

Using Azure Cloud and VIDIZMO EnterpriseTube, organizations can protect their valuable content and manage video management processes reliably and efficiently.

Ready to get started? Sign up now for a 7-day free trial of VIDIZMO EnterpriseTube, or get in touch with us to know more.