Premier league appoints Friend MTS as key defender

Friend MTS uses its global monitoring system and unique forensics capability to identify security weaknesses.

The Premier League is ramping up protection of its live broadcasts with the appointment of Friend MTS to help secure its pay TV licensees’ OTT and TV Everywhere streams across the globe.

Using its global internet monitoring system, and unique network forensics capability, Friend MTS will identify where security weaknesses are being exploited, and the Premier League notified.

Kevin Plumb, Head of Legal Services for The Premier League, said, “Protecting the distribution of our live games across all video platforms is paramount to us and our broadcast partners. By working with Friend MTS we will be able to identify any platform leaks, thereby ensuring that they can be fixed quickly.”

Friend MTS’ CEO Jonathan Friend said, “The Premier League is always innovating and evolving in its approach to piracy, and our new partnership will enhance this further by identifying real-world exploits of platform security vulnerabilities.  By making it harder for licensed services to become sources for piracy, and preventing cascading cases of ‘pirates pirating pirates’, this degrades the quality of illegitimate services and reduces the economic threat to rights holders.”

Friend MTS will feature the full range of its content protection solutions on IBC stand 1.A44 (Hall 1) from 11-15 September.  Friend added, “We will demonstrate how pay-tv platforms, broadcasters and content producers worldwide are using our technology and services to give them back complete control of the distribution of their channels and content.”