By Mwebantu Editor
Copyright mwebantu
TODAY, entertainment platforms are almost always digital. Unfortunately, that seamless digital efficiency comes with risks. That means leading digital content providers must now also be experts in cybersecurity, to ensure safe, secure entertainment for their subscribers, writes MultiChoice Chief Technology Officer Sabelo Mwali.
Africa has embraced digital technology, as by far the most effective channel for commerce, financial services, networking and entertainment. This has enabled our continent to leapfrog several sector developmental stages, and to become global leaders in many of these fields.
MultiChoice works in several of these spaces, through offerings like our satellite and streaming video platforms, interactive entertainment and our payment platforms. Given the vulnerability of these channels to cybercrimes such as content piracy, fraud and identity theft, we also recognise our responsibility to protect our users and our content.
The key is to balance the delivery of access with robust security. As a pan-African entertainment provider with a deep understanding of the continent’s challenges and opportunities, we believe we are well positioned to champion safe digital spaces for African needs.
The eternal challenge
Cybersecurity is an eternal challenge for any technology business. To address this, we are constantly evolving measures to ensure that we keep our data – and our environment – secure. Security has a compliance, and a systems-defense component, and both require ever-evolving technology.
Fighting cybercriminals and digital piracy syndicates is a kind of technology arms race; with tech teams trying to anticipate attacks, thinking in the same way hackers do – identifying vulnerabilities and then addressing them.
As a content business, one of our main focus areas will always be the fight against content piracy, in collaboration with Partners Against Piracy and our colleagues at cybersecurity leaders Irdeto. Our content is often targeted, but increasingly, we take the fight to the pirates.
Piracy destroys the livelihoods of film and TV professionals across the continent. Technology is our most powerful tool in addressing it – by deploying back- and front-end content protection, watermarking, take-down requests, law-enforcement engagement and other methods.
Payment solutions
MultiChoice has also long been an innovator in the payments space, having built a pan-African network of subscribers, support offices and payment partners. In a brave recent move, we have leveraged this network to launch a proprietary digital payment platform – Moment – to make payments as easy, right across the continent.
This kind of a payments solution also requires robust security infrastructure. To this end, Moment allows users to track every transaction, making it easy to onboard and authenticate payment providers, as well as to scale and integrate bulk payments.
Our pan-African entertainment ecosystem reaches 14,5 million households with 47 839 hours of live sports broadcasting hours last year, 1 029 in-house productions and 5 340 hours of local content – increasingly in the form of over-the-top (OTT) streamed content.
To protect this content – and our users – Irdeto’s TraceMark embeds unique forensic watermarks into every stream, enabling 24/7 monitoring and identification of pirate operations. Irdeto DRM ensures only authorised users access premium content, while its cybersecurity solutions protect infrastructure and credentials from infiltration.
These tools are complemented by Harmonic platforms that provide scalable, cloud-native media processing. Together, these solutions have a 85-90% success rates in identifying and disrupting piracy, significantly reducing revenue leakage for creators, rightsholders and production staff.
Where we deploy technology to fight content piracy through PAP or Irdeto, we are protecting careers, and the right of film professionals to earn a living from their work.
AI with a human touch
In the production space, we are seeing generative AI have a growing influence – though we are careful that it is always deployed in ways that will enhance the deeply human tradition of storytelling.
AI will even have a role in how we produce content on our SuperSport platforms over time. For instance, highlights packages can now be edited together in real time, while a match is still in progress.
All of these tech innovations come with ethical and governance considerations. For us, it’s about the human factor – considering our customers; considering our staff.
Nowhere are cost-of-living concerns more important than in Africa. Fortunately, tech advances are also enabling us to offer greater value for our subscribers.
Here is an example. In a developed market, a subscriber might stay on the same postpaid subscription product for decades. But in the African environment, a customer’s financial position can change drastically from one month to the next.
To cater to the needs of these subscribers, MultiChoice has launched a short-term subscription package in our Ugandan market. This package allows customers to buy a DStv subscription for a period as short as seven days. This “micro-subscriptions” product is being embraced by many of our customers in the heart of Africa. It’s likely to see wider adoption if initial uptake is anything to go by.
Technology, after all, must be used to serve the needs of people. Africa is the home of this kind of frugal innovation. It is a privilege to support our customers through technology in this way.
For our subscribers, as well as the film and TV professionals who rely on the MultiChoice ecosystem for their livelihood, innovation is not just nice to have – it’s a survival mechanism.
To encourage this kind of life-changing creative technology innovation in our region, MultiChoice also sponsors regular hackathon events on the continent, partnering with universities on AI solutions to industry challenges problems.
It’s about encouraging our youth to customise technology to Africa’s needs. Ultimately, we’re using technology to create safe, secure digital spaces, where our people can see themselves – in the content they love.
