With the pandemic requiring people to stay home, we saw an 83% rise in educational video streaming over the global lockdown. Consequently, eLearning platforms have become prominent as a means of remote learning and have steadily co-opted multimedia streaming as a part of their pedagogy. Educators and creators can use videos to disseminate knowledge among interested audiences. And there is no shortage of interest when it comes to e-learning!
In fact, according to one survey, 52% of respondents said that they watched at least two instructional or educational videos per week. However, with eLearning video platforms or any online presence comes the risk of cybercrime and security issues. This article covers the importance of cybersecurity and ways to access it.
What Is The Significance Of Security On Educational Video Platforms?
The year 2022 recorded that 87.3% of countries have breach densities that are lesser than the average of 50 account leaks per 1000 users. This means that hackers often engage in targeted breaches of specific locations and platforms. eLearning platforms form a chunk of that. Here’s where platform security becomes necessary:
1. Protecting Sensitive Data
Safeguarding classified user data is one of the most important parts of any platform, regardless of its services. These include the user’s personal information like payment information, location, etc. Information privacy is one of the most crucial aspects of data dissemination and must be upheld at all times.
2. Maintaining User Trust
Building and keeping trust is a major part of effective UX Design, which includes security. An online educational streaming platform must be able to assure users of the integrity of their data and information. This forms the major impetus behind helping users choose from various services that are available within similar niches.
3. Preventing Cheating and Fraud
Educational platforms are not without their share of fraudulent activities, such as identity theft, the theft of payment details, and breaching paywalls. That’s why it is necessary for such spaces to implement strong firewalls to protect and encrypt the data of creators as well as customers.
4. Copyright Violation
This is by far the most common type of breach that is found across all multimedia streaming Spaces. Poachers can download creators’ videos to upload them on alternative platforms for money. Additionally, they can try to pass information collected by other creators as their own without proper credit. This counts as plagiarism, which is a serious misuse and a violation of copyright and ownership laws.
5. Content Downloading
Some hackers and poachers can also download educational videos from paid e-learning platforms and upload them on illegal websites to bypass the paywall. This can be detrimental to the income of creators and educators who rely on online video platforms for their livelihoods.
Measures to Secure an Online Education Streaming Platform
In the face of severe security issues, there are a lot of interventions that are extremely effective when it comes to protecting creators and users. Here’s what can be done:
1. Protecting User Data
This is a strategy that forms the foundation of any cybersecurity measure. Safeguarding the private information and data of users is key to any platform. This can be done by encrypting data so that it becomes unbreachable. Simply put, encryption scrambles data into an essentially unreadable form by anyone without a decoding key. Most streaming services include some form of this as a part of their security measures.
2. Digital Rights Management (DRM)
This is a technology that helps regulate access to copyrighted materials. This measure helps secure the intellectual property from authorized usage, modification, and distribution. DRM is extremely important in today’s digital landscape of peer-to-peer transfer and torrenting. This is an important part of enabling creators to have agency over their content and how it can be used.
3. Securing Platform Integrity
This is also known as platform trust, which refers to the overarching security for multiple functions on e-learning sites. This includes user data, copyrights of creators, and global compliance. It also involves these platforms to be able to provide users and creators solutions and options to their desired level of privacy and security and offer quick interventions in case of breaches.
4. Preventing Cyber Attacks
It’s important to prioritize the prevention of cyber attacks because once they occur, situations can become quite unsalvageable. With looming threats like phishing, identity theft, etc., platforms must make sure breaches do not occur in the first place. This doesn’t have to be a complicated process and can start as small as keeping your software up to date. It also includes having strong firewalls and securing wifi networks.
5. Complying with Regulations
It is paramount that an online video education platform complies with set regulatory measures in order to implement cybersecurity. These involve all the standardized directives for video security and user experience.
6. Managing User Access
There are various levels of accessibility that come with e-learning platforms. Some platforms may require users to have an account before they can access videos. Others may have paywalls in place, making it necessary for audiences to purchase subscriptions, individual plans, or bundles to access e-learning video content. This is necessary for securing intellectual property and ensuring only genuine and interested users are accessing the content.
Conclusion
Elearning platforms have diversified immensely over the years due to the rise of remote learning. This simplifies how we access educational information and empower ourselves with knowledge. However, with the shifting online landscape and the increasing presence of user data online through numerous platforms, the risk of breaches is high all the time.
While there is no such thing as a benign breach, some carry graver consequences than others. Some of the more serious ones include security, identity theft, monetary theft, etc. video on demand streaming platforms must consider these and build robust security systems that protect their creators and users. These include ensuring user data is encrypted, managing access to ensure the copyrighted material reaches the right audiences, and having regular software updates.
GUDSHO prioritizes the safety and autonomy of creators and users as they access the highest quality educational content on the site. With competent security measures that safeguard data and uphold privacy, audiences and educators can feel assured that their information is protected. Try GUDSHO to take online education to new heights today!
