EBU teams with Ateme and Nevion for CA extension to BISS

European public broadcasters organization the EBU has teamed up with technology outfits Ateme and Nevion to update its royalty-free, interoperable stream protection standard BISS by delivering a conditional access extension – BISS-CA.

According to the EBU, BISS-CA will enable real-time entitlement management for content streams over any network.

The BISS-CA mode is based on symmetric AES and asymmetric RSA cryptography and carries all entitlement credentials in-stream. It allows media rights holders to grant and revoke receiving rights in real-time and includes mechanisms to ensure piracy traceability with technologies such as watermarking, according to the EBU.

BISS was created in 2002 as a standard to secure business-to-business contribution transmissions over satellite.

According to the organisation, the BISS update extends the protocol’s relevance beyond satellite contribution, as BISS-CA is network agnostic and software friendly, aligning the technology with the growing trend of software-defined media appliances.

“This is a much needed technology that fills a long-standing gap. With BISS-CA, business partners can now exchange live content, regardless of which vendor systems they operate,” said Hans Hoffmann, senior manager at EBU Technology & Innovation.