Password Protected Live Streaming: What You Need to Know in 2023

Password Protected Live Streaming

For most professional broadcasters, privacy and video security are an absolute priority. Whether you want to keep internal videos out of the public eye or prevent your live streams from being hacked by online predators, there are tools for keeping your online video content and information safe. After all, more than a few drawbacks exist to having your videos appear on YouTube search results.

Unfortunately, your YouTube channel might not be the best candidate for the job since you can’t password-protect a video on YouTube’s hosting platform. Protecting your live stream with a password is one of the most simple yet effective strategies available for keeping your online video content in front of your target audience, only your target audience.

In this article, we’ll teach you how to set up password-protected video hosting and live streaming, antoou can password-protect a video on Dacast in just a few simple steps. However, before diving into the tutorial, we will examine why password-protected streaming is essential for broadcasters and viewers.

After the tutorial, we’ll wrap things up by discussing how video monetization and password protection relate. We will also quickly go through some alternative video privacy and security features.

  • What is Password-Protected Streaming?
  • Uses of a Password-Protected Live Stream
  • How Do I Password-Protect My Event?
  • How to Add a Password to Videos on Dacast
  • The Best Way to Password-Protect a Live Event
  • How to Choose a Password
  • Where to Embed Live Streams
  • How to Manage Passwords
  • Video Monetization vs. Password Protection
  • Other Common Video Privacy and Security Measures
  • The Importance of Video Security in 2023
  • Complementing Password Protection with Other Features
  •  Conclusion

What is Password Protected Streaming?

Password Protected Streaming

Password-protected streaming is used to broadcast content to a select audience.

You can password-protect video content behind a prompt that requires a password to access the content. With password-protected live streaming, the viewer has to have a valid login provided by the content owner.

With the Dacast online video platform, this password is generated by the broadcasters themselves. That way, you can create your own. Since you’re developing this password independently, keeping a secure credentials record is essential.

Uses of a Password-Protected Live Stream

Password Protected Streaming Service

A password-protected streaming service offers several valuable features for online video delivery.

There are a variety of reasons why you choose to use password-protected streaming.

Password-protected videos can be crucial in business and other professional contexts, significantly since the business industry has increased its video usage at an annual rate of 50% in recent years.

Given this trend, training material and sales messages must remain secure and accessible only by qualified or approved people.

There is also a great need for protecting live streams with a password in the online education and medical fields. Chances are you broadcast sensitive material for private internal viewing alongside your public material. Password-protected video streaming might be the way to go if that’s the case.

Password protection is also excellent for video hosting of live and hybrid events. Whether hosting a webinar or streaming a concert, a password offers another layer of online security to ward off people not on your list for virtual event admission.

Password-protected live streaming via your Dacast account can significantly increase the security of your content. Here at Dacast, we are committed to offering high-level security features to our broadcasters.

Let’s look at how this feature works with your Dacast account.

How Do I Password-Protect My Event?

Dacast Video Security - Password Protected Streams - Live Channel Security

You’ll need to invest in a live streaming service with password-protection security features to password-protect your live event. Unfortunately, free services, like DailyMotion and YouTube videos, don’t have these tools.

Most professional video hosting platforms have some privacy and security tools, but uploading a YouTube video won’t cut it if you want to password-protect your event. Instead, you’ll need to choose an online video platform with that offering specifically.

Dacast offers password-protected hosting with all plans. Livestream, Vidyard, Brightcove, and other streaming solutions also support password-protected live streaming but only sometimes on all of their plans.

The specific steps for creating a password-protected broadcast vary from platform to platform

How to Add a Password to Videos on Dacast

As we mentioned, Dacast is one of the live streaming services with the tools to password-protect both live video and on-demand content.

To get started, sign in to your Dacast account. From there, navigate to the “Publish Settings” tab on and upload the video of your choice:

Dacast Video Security - Password Protected Streams - Live Channel Security

When turned “On,” a field populates, enabling you to enter a password. That’s the password your viewers will enter to access your video content:

Dacast Video Security - password protected live streaming

When you finish this step, please ensure you click the “Save” button in the lower-left corner.

You can password-protect your playlists as you do with an individual live channel or video files. To do so, choose a playlist and go to the “Publish Settings” tab just as you would for a particular content. Then click save as, turn password protection “On” and enter a password when prompted.

Once you enter the password, the viewer gains access to the playlist. They can then watch whatever content is currently playing.

Please note that this feature does not currently work for packages, unfortunately. For example, if you add content to a package with a password enabled, the package will ignore the password and allow the content to play.

You can also disable password protection anytime by toggling the feature from “On” to “Off.”

The Best Way to Password-Protect a Live Event

Remember a few things to get the most out of password-protected video content and live streaming. First, it’s essential to understand where to embed your password-protected streams, how to manage passwords, and even how to choose a password for your live stream.

Let’s quickly break down these elements.

How to Choose a Password for Your Live Event

You choose and use passwords daily for your password-protected video content on various accounts and subscriptions, intending to keep others out. However, when your live event stream is password-protected, it is slightly different because the goal is not to keep everybody out.

The first thing to remember as you choose your password is that it should not be similar to any login credentials you use for other sites, such as your YouTube channel. Also, don’t include personal or internal information because this password will be shared with your audience.

If it’s an event with 10,000 people, you’ll want to stay on the primary side so that people can remember the correct password. A single-word password will suffice.

However, suppose you’re sharing a video with sensitive content only meant to reach a select grple. In that case, make the password more complex with a mix of capital and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters.

Where to Embed Password-Protected Streams

embed password protected streams

Dacast allows you to embed your password-protected stream just about everywhere.

Unlike a YouTube video, with Dacast, you can stream live video on your website by embedding password-protected videos using the video.JS or iframe embed code.

You can find these codes in “Publish Settings” on the content. Next, navigate to “Embedded Player Codes” and choose the one you want to use. You can embed the link to the player anywhere, including your app, website, or social media platforms.

You can also privately share videos via password-protected live streaming and on-demand content via Twitter. Viewers can then click the tweet for an expanded view. At this point, they need to enter a password before gaining access to your content.

Please note, right now password protected streams do not work on Facebook. We are working to add this as a feature. First, however, we need a projection for when it might be available.

How to Manage Passwords

Have you Googled your video and the password and found it posted on a forum? Unfortunately, password sharing has been a problem since broadband internet made it easy to distribute these openly.

If this happens with your content, you can log into your Dacast account and replace the old password with a new one. That re-secures the content and kicks out any unqualified viewers on your password-protected live stream and on-demand content.

You can do this like you created the initial password under the “Publish Settings” on your content.

Video Monetization vs. Password Protection

When streaming on Dacast, you cannot enable the password protection function on monetized videos.

Rather than protecting your monetized video with a password, you’ll typically keep it safe behind a video paywall. Technically, the viewer will have to enter a password to view the stream after they’ve paid for access, but this will be their login credentials rather than a password you create as a broadcaster.

The paywall is used for both subscription and pay-per-view streaming. However, ad-based video monetization doesn’t use the paywall.

Other Common Video Privacy and Security Measures

video privacy and security

Password-protected streaming is just the beginning in terms of online video security measures.

When it comes to broadcasting live video streams, the most significant online security risk entails a third party who records and redistributes your content without your permission. The same goes for on-demand video content.

These days, many live streaming platforms strive to prevent just this through heightened security on their streaming content. This security ranges from the complex to the mundane, given that content is streamed and accessed via progressive download methods.

Password-protected video content and streams are is simply the first line of defense between your video and viewers without clearance. Dacast offers quite a few privacy and security measures.

Some of these features include:

·         AES Encryption

·         Domain and Geo-Restrictions

·         HTTPS video delivery

·         Dynamic Token Security

·         Live stream monitoring

·         SSL/TLS Encrypted Paywall for Payments Security

These measures will keep your video content safe and sensitive information out of the wrong hands.

The Importance of Video Security in 2023

Now that remote work has become so common, the use of live streaming for business purposes has grown significantly. For example, most meetings in the past took place within a physical building, but now it’s common for discussions to occur over the Internet through video.

People with bad intentions, like competitors and cyber criminals, are very aware and excited about the new standard’s opportunities.

There’s a lot of money to be made from getting access to the live streams of specific organizations. People with bad intentions are incredibly excited about streams where sensitive information is discussed, such as when organizations discuss business strategy, upcoming initiatives, unreleased products and apps, and more. And now that most organizations communicate with partners, vendors, and stakeholders via videos, there is no shortage of targets for criminals.

The Problem of Video Piracy in 2023

When considering the importance of video protection and security, another aspect to consider is video piracy, which is using and distributing content without permission. The increased use of online videos for business and profit comes with a copyright infringement nightmare for video creators.

The top video piracy sites get upwards of 216.8 million monthly unique visitors. According to a report, online piracy costs the entertainment industry around 30 billion dollars in profits each year. The illegal use and distribution of content have been a significant problem for video makers and audio-only streamers like artists for decades because there’s a lot of money to make.

The UFC and Video Piracy Example

Many live streams can be sold at a premium value because they are exclusive. One of the best examples to illustrate this is pay-per-view fighting matches. Consider the big McGregor vs. Khabib fights if you’re into sports.

Because these exclusive events come with premium prices, more and more viewers are likely to look for alternatives. Last year, the UFC lost a lot of money from people streaming their big flights without permission. In fact, according to the same report, the UFC alone loses about $30 million in profits annually.

In other words, if the stream can be easily shared with those who still need to buy access, there’s a lot of money to be lost.

Complementing Password Protection with Other Features

Make a strong password by combining uppercase and lowercase letters, symbols, and numbers.

Currently, there are no ways to 100% ensure video privacy and security. But there are many ways to drastically reduce the possibility and make yourself a more challenging target for those with bad intentions.

Nowadays, it’s gotten easier to steal and distribute content without permission using many readily available software on the Internet. That’s especially true for YouTube videos or live streams on any free hosting platform like YouTube.

Consider professional streaming platforms to protect your streams from maximizing profits and protecting sensitive information. Unlike a YouTube video, these platforms generally offer many features to watch your videos. In addition to using professional platforms, it’s also super important to learn about all the security features available today because only some professional platforms offer the same features.

Adding password-protected videos to your streams is a great way to start, but your video privacy and security attempts should continue. Creating password-protected video content is your first defense against unauthorized users accessing your live streams. Now let’s dive a bit deeper into the other security features available to you in 2023 for safe password-protected video sharing.

AES Encryption

AES video encryption ensures that your video content isn’t accessed in the wrong locations or by people who shouldn’t have access to it. It only allows those accessing the right website to see the specific video correctly.

If the video is accessed in the wrong place, all they can see is a useless string of characters. In other words, a viewer or hacker needs the proper encryption key to watch or distribute the specific video.

AES Encryption is another security feature available on Dacast.

Domain and Geo-Restrictions

Domain and geo-restrictions add another layer of protection against your videos’ illegal viewing and distribution.

Domain restrictions let you control where others can embed your video player. If you’re familiar with Youtube videos, you know how easy it’s to embed them onto any online video platform or web page. Unfortunately, professional platforms offer domain restrictions feature.

With a domain restrictions feature, you can limit the sites where your video can be embedded. For example, you can only white-list pages within your site. That way, the video player will not work when embedded on any other website.

Geo-restrictions follow a similar concept, but instead of white-listing or black-listing domains, you can white-list and black-list physical locations like countries.

In addition to password protection for multiple videos, domain and geo-restrictions are also available in Dacast.

Digital Rights Management (DRM)

Once your live streams finish, you’ll probably want to save the video for future re-use and as on-demand content. DRM protects your on-demand content from screen recording and ripping (when someone grabs video chunks from the network).

In addition to AES encryption, paywalls, and password-protected video sharing, DRM adds another layer against competitors and others with bad intentions.

DRM is now available on Dacast as well.

Watermarking

Although watermarking doesn’t necessarily make it harder to steal or redistribute your live streams, it makes it easier to make sure you get some credit for your hard work. If you’re unfamiliar with the term watermarking, it’s when you embed something like a logo or company name on the graphics of the video. That way, if it’s shared without permission, your logo or company name will also be shared.

Watermarking is getting more sophisticated for video hosting; you can even watermark the audio nowadays. Also, a concept called forensic watermarking is making it easier to track down the source of where your live stream was initially unlawfully shared.

Conclusion

Password Protected Streams

Ready for video hosting a password-protected stream?

Password protection is an added security feature we highly recommend for your broadcasting. Password-protected live streaming is increasingly the way for broadcasters and viewers alike. At Dacast, we make this feature easy and accessible for all our broadcasters.

Interested in checking out Dacast’s streaming solutions for the first time? You can sign up below for our 14-day free trial to test all the streaming features for yourself. No credit card is required. We’d love to help you get started with your password-protected video streaming today.

Do you have any questions, comments, or thoughts about password-protected live streaming or video hosting? We’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment in the chatbox below, and we’ll

Elise Furon

Elise is a digital marketer and an SEO expert. In 2019, she obtained the Google Analytics Advanced Certificate and the ClickMinded SEO Specialist Qualification.