Harmonic integrates Nagra tech for live sports streaming watermarking-as-a-service

Harmonic and NAGRA have announced a new partnership to offer watermarking-as-a-service for live sports streaming.

NAGRA NexGuard forensic watermarking serves as a key solution within the NAGRA Active Streaming Protection framework and is integrated within Harmonic’s VOS360 cloud SaaS platform. The companies said that this would offer content owners and service providers a streamlined solution for protecting premium content at scale during live sports events.

Harmonic’s VOS360 cloud SaaS platform promises low-latency video quality up to UHD. The VOS360 cloud platform runs on the public cloud and serves thousands of live events per month.

NAGRA NexGuard forensic watermarking helps to identify the source of a content leak quickly and efficiently so that effective anti-piracy action can be taken. 

Eric Gallier, vice president, video customer solutions at Harmonic, said: “A significant rise in piracy during live sports events has fueled the need for stronger content protection solutions. By integrating NAGRA NexGuard forensic watermarking on our VOS360 cloud SaaS platform, we are offering a simple, automated, scalable and event-based anti-piracy solution to safeguard live sports content.”

Sebastian Kramer, senior vice president, business development and product line management at NAGRA, said: “Fighting piracy and illegal content sharing is critical for sports rights owners to preserve their revenue streams on premium content. Teaming up with Harmonic, we’re transforming content protection of live sports to reduce stream and credential hijacking, creating a robust defence against piracy with innovative solutions from our Active Streaming Protection framework that include forensic watermarking.”