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You may have heard of the “Renaissance Man,” a person with profound knowledge and expertise in a variety of different fields. Correspondingly, Dr. Stephen Kurtin could be called a “Renaissance Inventor.”

If you are of a certain age, you may remember the term “WYSIWYG” (What You See Is What You Get). This refers to computing+display technology which solved an important problem.  Prior attempts to computerize document production included, at most, one line of text display.   In the early 1970’s Kurtin et al invented the Videotype, the first electronic word processor.   It included not only a full page video display, but also WYSIWYG, thereby launching (long before PCs) the word processing revolution.  Not stopping there, Kurtin went on to create inventions in a many other fields, resulting in over 45 U.S. patents. These include surround sound, LaserJet font cartridges offering scalable fonts, electronic medical thermometry, and even adjustable focus glasses.

As part of our distinguished speaker series we were honored to have Dr. Kurtin drop by Intertrust to discuss his role [1969] in getting to the truth behind the apparent discovery of polymeric water (“polywater”).  During his visit, we were able to sit down with Kurtin for a brief conversation.

Intertrust: Why do you work across a many fields?  Why not specialize?

Kurtin:  It can be difficult to find really good problems, particularly since I prefer to work on challenges that lie in between established disciplines.  I can’t design a better integrated circuit than Intel, nor a better laser printer than HP, but I have developed technology to transfer a laser-printed address onto an envelope.

Q: Why did you decide to work as an inventor?

A: I started Lexitron Corporation right out of graduate school, and took the company public in 1972. Our Videotype word processor was the first to offer a full page text display, and also the first to offer WSYWIG.  It was a stunning advance, and rapidly achieved market traction.  We began with only three employees, and it was fun; as the company grew past 75 people it was still fun.  As the team rapidly expanded to over 600 people, management and political issues began to dilute my focus. We sold the company in 1976. I was happy to return to working as an inventor, developing new technology and then licensing it to established companies.

Q: Why go into eyeglasses?

A: I became 45 and therefore presbyopic.  To my surprise there weren’t any really good solutions, even though the problem had previously been addressed by many others.

Our resulting ‘Superfocus’ eyeglasses were well received. They were featured in the New York Times, won the coveted Wall Street Journal ‘Technology Innovation Award’, and also many other accolades.  NASA even selected Superfocus for use by the astronauts on the International Space Station.  Ultimately, despite rapidly increasing sales, we could not finance the company’s growth.  There are over 10,000 users out there, and a steady stream of requests from would-be wearers. Perhaps the technology will rise again.

Q: What advice would you give to a young technologist who wanted to follow his passion?

A: Finding a good problem is fun; solving it is even more fun.  My approach is to look for problems others don’t see, and solve them cleanly.

Here’s an inspirational historical example:  Many large trucks have multiple wheels per axel.  If the tire on an inside wheel blows out, there is no effect on drivability ...and hence the driver isn’t aware of the blowout.  More importantly, a blowout leads to the neighboring tire overheating, and also blowing out. Not good.  Recognizing the problem, many decades ago a professor at Caltech came up with a wonderful, and wonderfully simple, invention: in essence, hanging a thermocouple between each pair of tires so the driver can be notified when any location between a pair of tires begins heating up.  Simple, clean, effective.

Maher’s talk was entitled “Trust in the Connected World” and focused on trust and security at the intersection of cloud computing and IoT (Internet of Things, also called “cyber-physical systems” by NIST). Maher’s experience in this field is backed up by a long distinguished career at Intertrust and Bell Labs and his work at Intertrust developing systems of trust for genomic data, windfarm data and behavioral advertising data. It is also guided by his personal experience of 8 years spent setting up a home automation system.

One point Maher stressed was that IoT is particularly difficult from a security point of view. For one thing, IoT systems, notably those attached to home networks, are not monolithic but end up being composed of a number of different networks and protocols. On top of this, IoT networks aren’t static; they are dynamic and can change over time. Since the traditional methods of security are focused on maintaining boundaries around computers and networks, “the old methods of security we know don’t work very well,” (Maher).

Maher also stressed that IoT and cloud systems contain data that can be useful when shared but of course we have to be selective with who this data is shared and when. One of Intertrust’s solutions to these very difficult issues is to use techniques the company pioneered though its digital rights management (DRM) work to create “trusted intermediaries.” Said Maher, “DRM techniques designed for entertainment can be modified to protect personal information.” Trusted intermediaries are services run by third parties who have a fiduciary responsibility to protect data while managing it in the best interests of the data’s rights holders.

A slide from Dave Maher’s presentation discussing some of the difficulties inherent in securing today’s IoT systems.

As an example of a trusted intermediary, Maher brought up Genecloud, a service run by Intertrust that brings analytics and data governance to genomic data to help organizations collaborate while protecting privacy. One of the techniques Genecloud uses from DRM is mobile code: i.e. trusted software which is moved to where it is needed. Genecloud takes trusted software and moves it to where the genomic data resides, partly to comply with regulatory requirements. “We know the provenance of the code, what it does and what it doesn’t do,” said Maher.

For IoT security, Maher suggested that tools can be developed that are able to look at diverse devices such as a light switch or a solar panel and come up with the commonalities in terms of security requirements. By rationalizing the different risks, “we can ensure security is independent of networking,” Maher noted. Cloud services, trusted execution environments (TEE) and other techniques can be adapted to IoT security services, but “we don’t have any standards for any of this,” (Maher). 

The entire presentation and following panel discussion can be viewed here.

As innovative technologies continue to disrupt businesses, especially with the proliferation of devices and platforms in IoT, new and peculiar security threats have emerged. Application security’s role in the evolution of the enterprise business market cannot be overstated, and as such the CV Magazine 2016 Technology Innovator Awards were designed to recognize and reward the individuals, departments and firms behind the ground-breaking developments and respective security solutions that change the way people do business.

All businesses that create mobile and IoT applications know that every mobile app and IoT developer who has secrets to hide knows that hackers will attack their apps’ software instructions. whiteCryption provides the world’s most advanced code obfuscation and white-box crypto technologies that protect apps with sensitive information and thwart attacks on apps. Today, whiteCryption protects major media players, mobile payment apps, smart car apps and healthcare apps. The applications are limitless, and as IoT devices proliferate, whiteCryption is rapidly becoming the standard of care against app hacking.

“We live in a world where it’s becoming more and more critical to protect software applications against reverse engineering, tampering and compromised secrets,” said Thorsten Held, managing director, whiteCryption. “We’re honored to be presented with CV Magazine’s Most Innovative App Security Award as it reinforces the whiteCryption mission to help companies minimize known enterprise business risks, comply with industry regulations and best practices, and enable responsible risk management for their applications.”

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About whiteCryption

whiteCryption® is a leading provider of software code protection and white-box cryptography products. whiteCryption, an Intertrust company, supplies its patented technologies to the world’s leading software, hardware and content companies in the entertainment, automotive, IoT, healthcare and finance industries. whiteCryption Cryptanium™ security solutions protect mobile apps, desktop applications, firmware and embedded applications and are available for all popular platforms such as Android, iOS, Windows, OSX and Linux, as well as embedded systems. Visit www.whitecryption.com.

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Read more at ExpressPlay

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Beth Kindig, Product Evangelist for Intertrust, recently had an article published in the website of the IAPP (International Association of Privacy Professionals). Check out this very timely article entitled “Who is responsible for the data security of 50 billion connections?”

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ROME and SUNNYVALE, Calif., July 18, 2016 –  Intertrust Technologies Corporation, the world’s leading provider of secure and trusted distributed computing products and services, applauds its partner Tivù for their launch of Tivùon!, Italy’s first open standards-based Internet TV service. Tivù is a joint venture of commercial broadcaster Mediaset, state broadcaster RAI and the country’s largest telephone network operator, Telecom Italia. Tivù also operates services for satellite and digital terrestrial TV, with its Tivùsat service being Italy’s primary free TV satellite platform, reaching 2.2 million households.

Tivùon! provides a unified program guide and catch-up TV services on Internet TV sets and set top boxes, allowing Italian viewers to enjoy rich TV programming from top broadcasters and content providers. Tivù expects Tivùon! to grow rapidly and reach over 3 million Italian households by the end of 2016.

Intertrust and Tivù joined forces in 2010 to add world-class Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology to the Tivùon! platform that is based on the open Marlin DRM standard. Created by Intertrust, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung and Sony, Marlin DRM is the world’s only open standard for DRM technology, and is broadly deployed around the world.  In addition, Intertrust’s Seacert certificate authority provides root key services for authentication and regionalization to Tivùon!.

“We founded Tivù in 2008 to provide Italian TV viewers open, free and accessible viewing options that are devoid of proprietary agendas,” said Alberto Sigismondi, chief executive officer of Tivù. “In designing Tivùon!, we selected the best open standards technologies available, MHP, DASH, CENC, Marlin, and in 2017, HbbTV. This provides a scalable, cost-effective, market friendly technology stack to our hardware and service provider partners, and ultimately a free-of-charge solution to Italian TV viewers.”  

Tivùon! is initially available on TVs from LG and Samsung, and on Tivùsat and other terrestrial set top boxes manufactured by ADB, Humax and Sagemcom. Tivù plans to expand this service to all Internet TVs in the Italian market. With over 25 million households, a rich broadcaster ecosystem, who are served by some of the world’s leading service providers, Italy is a vibrant digital TV market, and an example for other markets.

“Intertrust is proud to be a close partner of Tivù’s and it’s truly heartwarming to see Tivù launch their Internet TV platform,” said Talal Shamoon, Intertrust’s chief executive officer. “Tivù’s extensive use of open standards and inclusive approach to all content providers and broadcasters, gives Italian consumers a fantastic and competitive entertainment experience on popular Internet consumer electronics devices. We are delighted to work with Tivù to provide open standards-based DRM on their platform.”

About Intertrust Technologies Corporation

Based in Silicon Valley with regional offices around the world, Intertrust provides trusted computing products and services to leading global corporations – from mobile and consumer electronics manufacturers and service providers to enterprise software platform companies. These products and services include leading media digital rights management technology, software tamper resistance and secure, rights managed, big data platforms for advertising technology, healthcare and bioscience, and IoT. Intertrust technologies enable a world of distributed data and processing, and allow users to interoperate across and within vertical markets. For more information, visit www.intertrust.com. or follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Media Contacts

Robin Buckley
DC2SFGroup LLC
703.533.9805 or 703.201.3524 (mobile)
robin@dc2sfgroup.com

Leigh Anne Varney
Varney Business Communication
415.713.0713
la@varneybusiness.com

Here are two takeaways that really stood out at this event:

Neural Word Embeddings are the Rule, not the Exception
Neural word embeddings, such as Word2Vec, are a clever method of representing words in a natural language vocabulary (typically consisting of millions of terms) in a nice and compact vector space where it is much easier to detect signals and patterns in how the words are represented. This is accomplished by training an artificial neural network to perform some (often not directly related but well defined) tasks involving natural language, such as asking the network to guess the next word in a sentence after showing it the last few words. Word2Vec then throws away the rest of the network and only keeps the part of the neural net trained to represent terms vocabulary as vectors (representations of the words as lists of a few hundred numbers) that it found useful in solving the original task. Click for for a further introduction to these algorithms.  

This technique (and others like it) has had remarkable results in the area of natural language representation for machine learning over the last few years, primarily leveraged by companies at the cutting edge of natural language machine learning. No longer. W2V and its cousins have permeated all corners of the industry as the standard in text processing and natural language representation. For the vast majority of the talks I attended, if W2V was not a cornerstone of the results, it played a key part in the discussions following, as data scientists speculated how it might further improve the work. 

A Sour Sentiment on Sentiment
While rich multi-dimensional representations of text in terms of Word2Vec vectors is clearly in vogue, tasks such as Sentiment Analysis (SA) in industry are not. Sentiment Analysis boils natural language strings pulled from social media and CRM data down to a spectrum of positive and negatively characterized sentiments. During a panel discussion, the audience was polled on their experiences with this task, revealing two insights: 

• First, nearly every practitioner at some point in his or her career has been asked to do SA for a customer or stakeholder.  
• Second, no one in the audience has had an experience in which SA alone was able to drive business value.

The explanation for the first point is likely a sociological one: sentiment analysis is easy to understand; customers feel good about X or they don’t and their words will tell us the difference. The reason why it is so uncommon for practitioners to be able to use SA to drive value is likely that customer opinions on a product or brand are often more complicated than binary sentiments. They might be pleased or displeased for a variety of reasons, so simply knowing the overall sentiment does not easily facilitate actionable insights. Moreover, certain sample sets such as CRM logs are often overwhelmingly biased; you don’t need a data scientist to tell you that if someone is calling customer service, their outlook might not be so positive at that moment.  

For this discussion, Feland shared some of Argus’ insights on the consumer smart home market. First, the good news (based on data from March 2015-2016) was that consumer sentiment around smart home products climbed more quickly than those around laptops and tablets (these two actually went down), smartphones, and wearables. Among the different product categories, doorbell cameras and motion detectors are gaining mainstream acceptance, but the biggest winner has been the voice controlled Amazon Echo smart home hub device (Feland’s advice: “Go get one”). On the downside, smart lights, smart locks and smart switches showed increased consumer frustration.

Feland dug deeper into what causes consumer frustration with smart home devices. One major issue is the difficulty of setting up the devices: Getting the devices onto the Wi-Fi network is a particularly challenging barrier.

Mind the App Gap

One of the more surprisingly frustrating points that consumers find with smart home products are the smartphone apps associated with the devices. Calling this the “app gap,” Feland pointed out that smart home device smartphone apps were consistently rated lower than the devices themselves. Feland called out the Philips Hue lighting app as a prime example of this gap. He said it was a particular challenge to Philips’ business model since it would be difficult for Philips to sell enough light bulbs to cover their customer support costs arising from the app.

Consumer delight in smart home devices is positive while the same can’t be said about the app

More concern over security than privacy

Issues around security and privacy for smart home devices have been a topic in the tech press for some time now. Feland found that consumers were also showing concern about these two topics, but that of the two, security was the greater concern. Argus’ data showed there are more tweets about security than brand. “It seems that people are more concerned about their goodies getting taken than being seen,” said Feland.

Another area of concern that Feland singled out was the fail mode of many smart home devices. According to Feland, many smart home device manufacturers don’t pay enough attention to what happens when their products fail. He brought up a couple of different incidents indicating the cost to consumers of this sort of neglect. In one case, a lightbulb in a smart home network failed and the constant messages from the device notifying that this had happened brought the home network down. The other one happened to Nest Thermostat owners in the middle of a cold spell in the East Coast. Many Nest devices couldn’t reach the home network and drained their batteries trying to do so. The heating then turned off, leading pipes to burst for those homeowners who had set the temperature to keep that from happening. “Many of these devices still need a good limp home mode,” said Feland.

Security concerns trump privacy amongst consumer

Not surprisingly, Feland believes the smart home market still hasn’t found the killer app and is still in the “pre-iPhone” stage of the market. One of the areas he is hopeful for is to bring more intelligence into the home. Most of the devices being sold now are stand-alone. More intelligence is needed to help the devices connect to each other and perform relatively complicated tasks. One encouraging trend in this area he identified was Amazon’s decision to open up Alexa, the voice-controlled artificial intelligence application powering the Echo and other Amazon devices, to third-party developers. “Amazon started off with a community garden, not a walled garden…. Amazon is now a smart home provider,” noted Feland.

Argus’ and other researchers’ insights into the smart home market show that the typical home is a deceptively difficult environment and the tech industry still has quite a way to go in really meeting consumer needs. There is still plenty of room for innovation in the market, but market players need to be very sensitive to the needs and vulnerabilities of their customers.

Read more at Forbes

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Parks Associates is one of the go-to sources for market research and analysis on the intersection of consumers and the technology industry. They have been sponsoring the Connections event focusing on the connected home for 20 years, long before the current market interest in home IoT. While the industry has changed greatly over the last 20 years, Connections continues to be an important event to get the latest information about and insight into the connected home market. Intertrust is proud that for this year’s Connections US event our Chief Product Officer Tim Schaaff was selected to be a panelist to speak at a session “Personalizing Connected Entertainment: Metrics and Big Data.” Others on the panel included Eric Anderson from Gracenote, Mike Rich from comScore and Tom Waters from Jabil. Schaaff’s rich experience in digital media product development gives him the a wealth of background to discuss how data coming from today’s connected consumer devices can be used to provide personalized entertainment, as well as the privacy issues the use of this data can pose.

One of the initial topics brought up by the panel was comparing the personalization opportunities afforded by two very popular consumer devices, the smartphone and the TV. Everyone agreed that the TV was far behind its smaller cousin in personalized services. Schaaff noted that in general the TV lacks the sophisticated software taken for granted in the smartphone and the personal computer for that matter. “Real time video personalization is hard to deliver” so the TV’s lack of a robust software platform was a major concern said Schaaff. Comcast’s Rich pointed out that some set-top boxes were making progress in this area and data assets that can be used for personalization are available, but putting the two together was still a work in progress. Yet, Schaaff raised the issue that interoperability between different types of data and the analytics was still a work in progress.

Another topic of interest was the role of social media in content personalization. Gracenote’s Anderson said that social media alone is not a solution. “Personalization is the intersection of of social media and return path data; you need all of those.” As an extension, a question was raised about virtual social viewing, something thought to be of interest particularly for sports. Anderson referred to a Samsung study that showed there was a reason many people watch games alone for a reason; they’re really not interested in sharing. Schaaff suggested that social media was the harbinger of a generational shift in content consumption. “If you look outside of our generation, you will see generations of people with very different habits of media…. Any expectations will be totally wrong in China which has a young audience totally focused on the mobile Internet.”

One of the more interesting questions from the audience was how data from IoT could be used in content personalization. The rise of consumer IoT devices has brought a lot of buzz to the tech industry around the possibilities of using data from these devices for many different purposes. For personalized entertainment, one could imagine how a fitness wearable could help a TV identify who was in the room and even know what mood they were in. Jabil’s Waters suggested that these sorts of scenarios could run into the law of unintended consequences, bringing up the example of how the Target store chain used data analytics to send out coupons for baby products and inadvertently alerted a father that his daughter was pregnant before he even knew. Schaaff pointed out that personalization is just one potential use of this data. “This data will have a profound impact and it will be not just for personalization and other stuff beneficial to the consumer.”

In answering this question as he did throughout the session, Schaaff addressed one of the important questions that needs to be answered for data driven content personalization to really take off, namely privacy. For example, with social data Schaaff pointed out how social media already has huge amounts of personal data “but we don’t have any control over it.” IoT data will drive the amount of personal data being captured to even new levels. “We have not yet figured out what to do about invasions of privacy. Privacy policies alone will not protect you,” said Schaaff. As in so many other fields, the entertainment industry will need to continue work on ways of ensuring privacy in exchange for using personal data to drive the industry forward.

At the conference, I presented “Sparse Data Alternatives With Neural Network Embeddings”  with co-presenters and skymind contributors David Ott and Marvin Bertin, who, along with Michael Ulin, have been working to develop the “Like2Vec” algorithm over the past six months.  

The advent of continuous neural word representation technologies such as Word2Vec has transformed how data scientists and machine learning experts work with natural language data. One reason these algorithms are so successful is that they offer an efficient information preserving methodology to highly compress native features (e.g., word frequencies) to the dimensions of the embedded vector space. This is particularly effective in the sparse data context of word count frequencies.

Recently, word embedding algorithms have been generalized to generic graph networks contexts. In the talk, we released initial results on performance of what we refer to as the Like2Vec algorithm, which applies this generalization to alternative sparse data contexts such as user-based as well as item-based recommender algorithms.

Intertrust's methods control the way that third-party researchers access and interact with sensitive datasets, ensuring that the data-access principles that the data owners have put in place are upheld. This includes a full set of policy controls to manage individual and group access to data, as well as access control rules that let users determine what data attributes are off limits for a given party and limit access to data to maximize anonymity. There are also tools for tracking all actions performed in the system including what datasets have been accessed and what analysis programs have been run. 

Read more at Genome Web (subscription required)

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Read more at Pharmabiz.com

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Immunotherapies and genomic medicines are transforming how we treat cancer, infectious disease, and autoimmune diseases. Drugs and vaccines that harness the immune system are rapidly emerging as the foundation for the next generation of precision and cellular medicines. Founded by leaders in the field of single-cell genomics from MIT and Berkeley, Haystack Bio has developed a revolutionary analysis platform that incorporates breakthrough cell imaging, genomics and advanced bioinformatics. Building on this platform, Haystack is creating a unique immunology knowledge-base and discovery engine that is yielding novel insights to drive the next generation of therapies.

Genecloud is a distributed Big Data platform for trusted storage and analysis of genomic and other health information. Intertrust built Genecloud to enable collaboration within and between institutions to address issues such as genomic privacy by allowing users to interact with sensitive data only through secured computer programs —trusted analytics — that are governed by stakeholder policies. Genecloud ensures that all customer data is persistently protected and accessible only to those with demonstrable rights to interact with it. Sophisticated auditing mechanisms guarantee that all accesses are logged to support customer compliance efforts.

“Haystack Bio’s platform will be used by biopharma partners and research institutions around the world.  We believe that Genecloud is the best way to store, analyze and collaborate around data, maximizing productivity while protecting privacy. Data governance is essential for genomics, and nobody addresses this challenge as deeply or as systematically as Genecloud,” said Jim Flanigon, CEO of Haystack Bio.                                            

“We are very excited to partner with Haystack Bio in their mission to bring cutting edge single-cell analysis into mainstream drug development,” said Knox Carey, vice president of technology initiatives at Intertrust and general manager of Genecloud. “Our partnership will allow Haystack and its customers to collaborate securely and develop novel insights with firm assurances that their data and intellectual property are absolutely protected.”

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 About Intertrust

Intertrust provides trusted computing products and services to leading global corporations – from mobile and CE manufacturers and service providers to enterprise software platform companies. These products include the world’s leading digital rights management, software tamper resistance and privacy-driven data platforms for media and entertainment, ad tech, healthcare and IoT.                                               

Founded in 1990, Intertrust is based in Silicon Valley, with regional offices in London and Beijing. The Company has a legacy of invention, and its fundamental contributions in the areas of computer security and digital trust are globally recognized. Intertrust holds hundreds of patents that are key to Internet security, trust and privacy management components of operating systems, trusted mobile code and networked operating environments, web services and cloud computing. Additional information is available at intertrust.com. Follow Intertrust on Twitter or LinkedIn.

About Haystack Bio

HaystackBio is an immuno-discovery and engineering company for precision cellular medicines. We employ a fully integrated and proprietary single-cell platform that includes breakthrough single-cell profiling, cloud-based data processing and analytics. The result is an immuno-knowledgebase and discovery engine that uniquely enables us to generate novel insights from complex samples—needles in haystacks—and then use this information to help stratify and engineer more durable immune medicines. Additional information is available at haystackbio.com.

Media Contacts

Robin Buckley
DC2SFGroup LLC
703.533.9805 or 703.201.3524 (mobile)
robin@dc2sfgroup.com

Leigh Anne Varney
Varney Business Communication
415.713.0713
la@varneybusiness.com

Brachman is working with Segovia, a small startup creating a software platform to help NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and other philanthropic organizations quickly organize effective bulk payment programs. Segovia’s work is guided by both direct experience and research experience that posits that the direct distribution of cash to underserved communities is the most effective way to help with economic development. “Research shows that giving cash has lead to major decreases in youth unemployment in Uganda and reduction in low birth weights in Uruguay, all with almost no abuse of funds,” said Brachman. In fact, cash payments have had such promising results that United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called for it to be “the preferred and default method of support.”

A Software Platform Anyone Can Use

Segovia is a spin-out from GiveDirectly, a team of philanthropists currently undertaking the disbursement of cash payments to low-income families in Kenya and Uganda. Noted Brachman, “They saw that if you go through major charities, maybe 50 cents on the dollar get to the recipient… By giving directly to people, their track record averages 91 cents to the dollar.”

Brachman said that the pervasive use of cellphones and the proliferation of locations that accept debit cards represent a great opportunity to make effective cash payments to the many people who still don’t have access to banking services. Yet, there are a number of challenges to implementing these programs. One is supporting staff in the field who oversees these programs. Brachman pointed out that “you need to send people you trust into the field to capture info, typically from mobile phones.” According to Brachman, not only do you need to get apps out to the agents in the field, you have to make sure the apps can work when there is no connectivity available, make sure the agents are trustworthy, double check the spelling of recipient names, confirm the right households are the ones receiving cash, ensure that the programs are auditable, deal with multiple payment systems and government agencies, and so on.

Dealing with all of these challenges led the GiveDirectly team to setup Segovia as a separate company whose objective would be to develop a software platform to handle these sorts of programs. The Segovia platform, however, is designed not just for GiveDirectly's use, but to also support other organizations that may have different needs. “One aspiration is when a government puts out a call for emergency relief because of a tsunami or other natural disaster, providers can do a few interface plugins and be up and running quickly,” said Brachman.

A Call for Best Practices

As part of Brachman’s work, he said he is looking for “computer science driven best practices” around data security and privacy. One of the challenges, he noted, is that the economic development community for whom the software is meant usually has expertise in fields other than information technology. User experience is one of his major concerns. “Bad user experience can open up Pandora’s Box. If someone needs to get something done and the user interface doesn’t allow it, they’ll find a way to hack it or get around it."

Privacy is one area which Brachman noted can be rather complex. While teams may be operating in Africa and other locations, data may be stored in the European Union or other locations, meaning the teams have to follow multiple jurisdictions' laws. Disaster recovery is another concern. Development teams may be working in areas that are vulnerable to natural or political disasters. “Where do you store data and how do you reconstruct it fast so that you can get up and running?”

While the challenges are numerous, the importance of Brachman’s work is indisputable. It’s certainly a challenge many in the technology community should be happy to embrace.

If you’d like to view the entire talk, be sure to check out the video linked here.

Ron Brachman talking about innovation in economic development at Intertrust

Naver is Korea’s most popular online site.  Additionally, they own the hugely popular social network LINE (215 million users as of April, 2016 – more than Snapchat). With these assets under its belt, Naver is a South Korean Internet giant with a hand directly on the pulse of the South Korean entertainment industry. Through partnerships with major South Korean content companies, and the popular Naver Media Player app, Naver gives its fans access to a wide variety of content including live concerts, behind-the-scenes content about South Korean celebrities, sports and news.

With all the fan attention on South Korean celebrities, it’s no surprise that Naver’s live broadcasting app V is very popular with over 19 million downloads worldwide since September 2015. Through V, fans can enjoy live broadcasts from their favorite celebrities, including quite a few K-pop stars. For the celebrities, these live broadcasts represent valuable ephemeral content. For the fans, the V app is like other apps, vulnerable to a number of attacks by bad actors that could jeopardize sensitive information. To help protect both of these, we’re happy to announce that Naver has agreed to license the whiteCryption solution to secure the V app. whiteCryption already helps protect apps used for connected cars, medical devices and banking, so we are proud to add K-pop stars and their fans to the growing list. 

Attacking the Control App

While drones are a type of aerial robotics, the majority of the products on the market are remotely controlled to a greater or lesser extent by a human pilot. Many drone manufacturers use a mobile app for controlling their drones that the pilot downloads to their smartphone or tablet. These apps typically allow the pilot to do such things as plan the flight pattern, send control commands to the drone and view the video stream coming from the drone.  

As with any other mobile app, if not properly protected these control apps are vulnerable to hacking techniques such as reverse engineering, side channel attack or improper access to internal secrets when run on a "jailbroken" or "rooted" mobile device. If a bad actor uses these techniques to access an app, some of the potential consequences could include injection of malware into the app or theft of intellectual property. Also, while strong encryption of the link between the mobile device and the drone is not universal (which can be a great concern), there are apps that encrypt communications between the drone as well as view an encrypted video feed. Again, if the app developer doesn't take precautions, the private cryptographic keys for the encryption (as well as other security features on the device such as controlling access to the mobile data feed) could be revealed in the source code of the app or in memory of the device.

None of these attacks are unique to an app controlling a drone. What is unique is that the drone is a kinetic device which, for filming work, can weigh about 25 kilograms (approximately 55 pounds) and fly up to 72 kilometers per hour (45 miles per hour). Should a control app be compromised in some fashion, there are potentially serious risks to property or human health (i.e., the drone could crash into something or somebody).

The video feed from the drone is also considered valuable intellectual property and could be intercepted by an unauthorized actor if hacked. The threat to the video feed also doesn't stop after transmission from the drone. Typically, a video feed from a drone is sent to a server from where it could be transmitted live for a news show or sporting event. Once the video is transmitted to the server, if it had been encrypted from the drone, it should be decrypted before it is distributed, making it yet again vulnerable.

Adding Protection

Intertrust's whiteCyrption technology helps protect apps such as control apps for drones in a couple of ways. First, the software uses hardening and obfuscation techniques at the source code level to protect the app software from reverse engineering and other attacks. It also employs white-box cryptography techniques to hide cryptographic keys from unwanted eyes. whiteCryption's white-box cryptography technology is the only such technology on the market rated FIPS 140-2, meaning it is acceptable for U.S. Federal Government use. whiteCryption is already used in mission-critical applications such as protecting apps used with major European automobile manufacturer's cars as well as in software for medical devices so, it is well suited for drone apps.

For protecting video distributed from the server, ExpressPlay, Intertrust's cloud-based DRM (digital rights management) service, plays a role. Used in protecting premium video distributed by major OTT (over-the-top) video service providers around the world, ExpressPlay offers a set of tools for video distributors to simply and cost-effectively add DRM at scale.

News and sporting event production crews working with drone video can benefit from the same features that OTT video distributors are already using such as a) ability to handle live video, b) support of all major mobile and desktop platforms so collaborators can use their device of choice, c) a simple sign-up process, and d) usage-based pricing that can scale up or down with the service. ExpressPlay makes it easy for a production team to use the same technology protecting finished Hollywood movies to control and protect distribution of this valuable drone video.

“Session-based watermarking is critically important, particularly in a large market such as China,” says Hanno Basse, CTO of 20th Century Fox. “ExpressPlay’s offering allows us to aggressively pursue new distribution opportunities that consumers want, such as early-window movie releases that are much closer to theatrical release dates, while appropriately managing the piracy risk that comes with them.”

Read more at Screen Play Magazine

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A look at Intertrust booth at NAB Show 2016 in Las Vegas, NV.

Located in the Connected Media IP Pavilion in the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Intertrust booth was both lively and informative. Throughout the day we fielded questions from a diverse audience of exhibition attendees — ranging from analysts to members of the press and curious tourists. (We even had a few t-shirt collectors stop by.)

Intertrust employees inform visitors about the company’s digital entertainment ecosystem solutions.

Analysts, current and potential customers, and friends of Intertrust stopped by the booth throughout the day.

The most important part of participation, however, was the specialized knowledge that several of our employees brought to the table. Guido, our resident whiteCryption and ExpressPlay specialist, was on hand to walk attendees through the intricacies of multi-DRM support, app protection, and visual watermarking. Meanwhile, Elisabeth, our Personagraph product evangelist, eagerly explained how our mobile-first data platform generates interest- and demographic-based audience segmentation.

In keeping with this year’s theme of aerial robotics, the Intertrust booth at NAB featured its very own drone. Dangling right in front of the Intertrust logo, it was impossible to miss for anyone walking by the booth. Many attendees stopped by our exhibition counter to ask why Intertrust was getting in on this year’s drone action.

The answer: in an age of increasingly connected technologies, trust and security are more important than an ever. Intertrust products such as whiteCryption, our app protection technology, and ExpressPlay, our marquee cloud-based DRM service, are not only capable of protecting the applications that control drones, but also the content that is streamed from them.

But the Intertrust drone was not just for show. Any booth attendee was welcome to enter for a chance to win the drone (specs: Quadcopter 4 Channel 2.4 GHZ Remote Controlled Model). All they had to do was have their event badge scanned by one of our team members. 

Attendees were welcome to enter for a chance to win a drone at the Intertrust booth.

Intertrust Personagraph Product Evangelist Beth Kindig enters an exhibit visitor by scanning his badge.

So who won? On Wednesday, April 20 at 5 p.m., we were happy to announce that Stephen from Menlo Park, California was the winner of the Intertrust drone. We hope that he has a fun time flying it!

Stephen won the drone, which was similar to the one hanging in our booth.

NAB, however, was not just all fun and drones. 

Our team discusses customer feedback at the booth and how to improve our products.

Close up shots of Intertrust team members listening and learning from our customers.

Intertrust team member Emmie shares a moment of levity with Beth.

Intertrust was also delighted to have our Chief Product Officer Tim Schaaff with us during the NAB Show. Tim did not only spend his fair share of time at the booth; he also participated in several interviews and presentations on behalf of the company.

On Monday, April 18, Tim participated in a panel discussion entitled “Are You Ready for the Mobile Video Revolution?” On Wednesday, April 20, he delivered a seminar called “Emerging Markets and Content Protection.” Both of these events were widely attended. These talks focused on the state of the current mobile video market as well as the growth of OTT (over-the-top) video service providers in the Chinese and Indian markets. 

Intertrust Chief Product Officer Tim Schaaff delivers a seminar in the Connected Media | IP Theater.

Intertrust Chief Product Officer Tim Schaaff speaks to an engaged crowd.

All in all, NAB Show 2016 was a singular opportunity for our team to engage with our current and future customers. We were thrilled to have this opportunity to showcase our industry-leading products and look forward to connecting again at future trade shows and conferences.

After four days of exhibiting, our team members were a bit low on sleep, but they had all had a blast. Engaging with our customers and the industry always puts a smile on our faces. We hope you had as much fun as we did at the NAB Show this year.

Intertrust employees sign off from NAB, having had a great time meeting our customers.

The Statute of Anne, recognized as the world’s first copyright law

What do The Two Gentlemen of Verona and the The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha have in common? There are probably several treatises written about this, but for our purpose, both their authors – William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra -- died on April 23rd, 1616. To commemorate their lasting contributions, the United Nations declared today World Book and Copyright Day.

Although copyrights get a bad rap by many who believe that content should be license free, they, like patents serve a necessary role in society. Simply put, without copyrights, you wouldn’t have a vast array of books to choose from, or any other content for that matter, just as, without patents, you wouldn’t have innovation. Intertrust provides technologies that manage copyrights and other intellectual property rights for all generators of intellectual property.

Copyright is an interesting legal concept. The first copyright law was the Statute of Anne or Copyright Act 1709 passed by the British Parliament. The statute established the rights of authors or the printers they worked with to license their works to others for a period of 14 years, after which the work became public domain.

Born at a time when the printing press had created the first true mass media market, copyright has remained remarkably resilient as media changed over the centuries to include not just print, but still and moving images, audio recordings, games, virtual reality experiences and software. It has also survived as distribution formats and methods have changed from printed materials sold at bookshops to analog audio and video material broadcast over the airwaves or distributed on physical media. Now in the 21st century, digital technologies and the Internet have created an ecosystem where almost anyone with a connected device can create any type of content and instantly deliver it to a billions of consumer electronic devices — from laptops and smartphones to e-book readers and mp3 players, to set-top boxes and 80-inch connected TVs.

Supporting the Creator

Throughout these changes, the concept of copyright continues to serve its most basic purpose. Namely, to give the individual or group of creators who labor to create a work of intellectual property — be it in the hopes of entertaining or informing  the world — the ability to receive some financial compensation. Whether the creator is a single author, a group shooting a YouTube series, or a large production crew producing the latest Bollywood musical, creative works represent many man-hours of difficult work. The public is well aware of the authors, song writers and video artists who have achieved fame and fortune, but most people don’t think about the many others who labor in relative obscurity hoping for that big break. Copyright gives all creators a legal basis to maintain control over their work, whether the goal is revenue or to ensure the work is only used as the author intends. In many ways, copyright is fundamental to the economic workings of today’s digital media ecosystem bringing the modern consumer an inexhaustible supply of media in all sorts of formats.

The advent of digital technologies presents creators with a profound dilemma. The very same technology allows creators to easily distribute content is also used to easily copy and disseminate works without permission. Intertrust was born over 25 years ago with the vision that nascent networks would soon evolve to enable the exchange of digital knowledge while still ensuring that the rights of the creators are respected, regardless of the format of the intellectual property at issue..

Today, Intertrust not only operates systems to protect the rights of copyright holders; we also provide technology to better monetize content on mobile devices, the fastest growing platforms for content consumption.. On this World Book and Copyright Day, we embrace the purpose of this technology, giving creators the means to earn a living doing the work they love and from which we all benefit. 

Tim Schaaff speaking at NAB 201

Intertrust’s Chief Product Officer, Tim Schaaff, spoke at NAB 2016 on the tremendous potential for OTT video services in emerging markets. A content industry veteran with head of Apple’s QuickTime development and President of Sony Network Entertainment International under his belt, Tim is now heading products like Intertrust’s ExpressPlay system. ExpressPlay is already the largest deployed content protection technology in China and used by 4 of the top 5 OTT service providers there, and is also gaining in popularity in India and Indonesia.

Emerging markets represent a great opportunity for the OTT video industry

In his presentation entitled Emerging Markets and Content Protection: Not an Oxymoron, Schaaff noted that there are 2.5 billion households with broadband access, more than the US, Japan and Europe combined. Schaaff also directly took on the perceptions around piracy in these markets. While agreeing that piracy is a deep concern for Western media companies, he provided some context for the practice. “Content sharing has deep roots in these cultures.  In many cases they don’t have access to content, but the need to share remains.”

Only Two Weeks to Make Money

Schaaff acknowledged the difficulty in overcoming long-established customs around content sharing and the technical savvy of many of the pirates in the market. Yet, he saw a way forward in cooperation with service providers in the market. “Local providers are now embracing content protection, at first for Hollywood but also later for their own content.” This is an important point. Emerging markets such as India and Nigeria have very active and vibrant content industries, but piracy limits the monetization opportunities available. “India produces more movies than anyone else. Yet, the industry only expects to make money in the first two weeks of theatrical release. After that, it’s all lost to piracy.” 

Content protection is a way to manage the flow of content and ensure revenue for content creators around the world. Schaaff pointed out that “what is needed is a suite of tools that can be deployed in an affordable way,” As examples of how this can be done, he first pointed out a startup called Kiora which is active in both India and Sub-Saharan Africa. Using content protection technologies provided by Intertrust, one of the products produced by Kiora is a low-cost “around $20 in volume” server device that acts as both a media server and a Wi-Fi hot spot. The server is designed to deliver locally stored content over Wi-Fi to the low-cost smartphones whose sales are rapidly increasing in emerging markets. Able to be easily deployed in taxis, trains and busses, “it’s a great way for people to get content on the go and not overburden networks,” notes Schaaff.

Schaaff also pointed out the importance of open standards-based content protection technologies. “Many local service providers don’t want proprietary technologies controlled by large foreign technology companies.” He noted that Intetrust’s embrace of open-standards was one important factor behind Intertrust’s success in the Chinese market.

When planning our annual pilgrimage to Las Vegas for NAB 2016, we, the marketing team at Intertrust, opted to forego hosting a cocktail party, and to participate instead as a registered team in the NAB 4K 4Charity Run. After all, “when in Vegas,” is not often followed by the words “run for charity” and we thought now would be a great time to motivate the company to participate in a philanthropic effort.

After intense deliberation, we settled on 3 participants:

Dash Pinger, who was by far our fastest runner, finished the 4K in 13:20. Standing at 6’3, he is a lean mean running machine known for stopping by Golden Gate Park on his drive home to stretch his legs and run a leisurely 5 miles. This is far from his peak ability though, which extends to 35 miles or more in ultra-marathons.

Guido, who goes by first name only, and heads the technology projects for Intertrust Europe, is Italian by origin and typically prefers cycling. In fact, he often competes in amateur road races and time-trials, plus he scuba dives all over the world. He took our in-house silver medal, coming in at 17:14. When asked what his strategy was for the 4K, he answered, “the thing that motivates me when I am about to finish a race is to picture the massive pizza I am going to devour when it’s all done!”

Beth Kindig, Product Evangelist, stopped for nature photography in the flat Nevada park, yet still beat her goal of 15 minute miles with a time of 21:45. Where she lacks in speed, she makes up for in adrenaline, eating up her PTO with escapades that involve helicopters, 14,000 foot mountains, and avalanche gear. 

The annual National Association of Broadcasters’ trade show (NAB Show) in Las Vegas is just days away, and our team is busy putting the finishing touches on our Vegas plans. From showcasing our digital entertainment security and privacy products on the floor to participating in important discussions about the industry, we’ll be on hand to answer any questions you may have about our products and solutions.

Mark your calendars and pack your bags! The Intertrust team will be at NAB at Booth #SU10002CM for the duration of the exhibiting time (from Monday, April 18 to Thursday, April 21). We hope we’ll get a chance to meet you.

Meet Our Products (and Our Team)

At NAB Show 2016, Intertrust will be highlighting three of its marquee trust and security products. These include:

•  ExpressPlay™ — a class-leading, cloud-based digital rights management service provider. ExpressPlay™ provides content protection during production, post-production and distribution, as well as DRM and watermarking when viewing content on devices such as laptops, VR goggles, 4K monitors and mobile.
• Personagraph™ — an independent horizontal data platform for mobile advertising and marketing. Personagraph™ adds connected device monetization of protected content for advertisers and content owners while respecting privacy.
• whiteCryption® — industry-leading software integrity technology. whiteCryption® secures apps throughout the ecosystem — from drones, cameras, robots, and IoT devices used during production to devices such as laptops and tablets during consumer playback.

Join Intertrust Chief Product Officer Tim Schaaf in Conversation

At NAB Show this year, you’ll have the opportunity to hear from Intertrust’s very own Tim Schaaf. A veteran of the technology industry, Tim oversees product development for a wide range of Intertrust platforms from distributed secure systems to media protection and privacy-based ad-tech technologies. Tim brings over 30 years of experience to this role, including 8 years as Vice President of Apple’s Interactive Media Group and his time as President of Sony Network Entertainment International.

On Monday, April 18, Tim will be participating in a panel discussion entitled “Are You Ready for the Mobile Video Revolution?”, in the Connected Media|IP theater. In this CM|IP panel, experts will assess the state of the current mobile video market and discuss the underlying mechanisms needed to deliver profitability in our increasingly mobile world.

Tim will be delivering a seminar on the subject of “Emerging Markets and Content Protection” at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, April 20 also in the Connected Media|IP theater located in South Upper Hall. More specifically, this talk will focus on the growth of video service providers in the Chinese and Indian markets and how content protection fits into the story.

For more information about these talks, visit the Intertrust NAB Show 2016 event page. We hope that you will join us for what are bound to be two stimulating conversations.

Drone Giveaway

Drones are more than just a toy for hobbyists! They are becoming an increasingly powerful and integral tool for video capturing. Used by both amateur videographers and the best-financed of broadcasters alike, they have made accessible previously hard-to-get shots. To celebrate their ever-heightened role (and because we know how fun they can be!), Intertrust will be raffling one off at our booth in Vegas.

Be sure to stop by Booth #SU10002CM at the NAB Show to enter for a chance to win a quadcopter drone. (Specs: Quadcopter 4 Channel 2.4 GHZ Remote Controlled Model.) One lucky NAB attendee will be selected and his or her name announced on Wednesday, April 20th at 5 p.m. PST.

No purchase is needed to enter and you do not need to be present when the winner is announced.

Last But Not Least, Come Cheer On Our Runners!

This year, we’re proud to be participating in the 4K 4Charity Fun Run, a race that commemorates advancements in video technology by entertainment players and technology providers. Along with 4K 4Charity, we will be supporting Mercy Corps, a global charitable organization that provides disaster and hardship relief around the world, and The Shade Tree, a local Vegas charity that provides safe shelter to homeless and abused women and children in crisis.

Four of Intertrust’s very own team members will be running in this grueling (okay, not really) 4-kilometer fundraiser. Come cheer our runners at 7:30 a.m. at Sunset Park (2601 E. Sunset Road, Las Vegas, CA) on Tuesday, April 19, 2016. Be sure to keep an eye out for Intertrust Account Manager Dash. Towering at 6’3”, Dash is a veteran runner and will be certain to dominate the field.

The US based film industry, collectively known as Hollywood, is big business. According to PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC), in 2013 Hollywood pulled in $31 billion. Yet, there are other geographical hothouses for filmed entertainment. Two particular notables are Bollywood in India and Nollywood in Nigeria. With large and growing populations, the potential of both these markets have long been a topic of discussion. Still, neither has really picked up in terms of revenue. As of 2015, even with a market of 1.3 billion people in India, Bollywood revenue was only $2.32 billion. Nigeria is Africa's most populous country with a population of 182 million. Yet, according to one report, in 2014 Nollywood’s revenue was $3.3 billion, surpassing Bollywood.

Both Bollywood and Nollywood work in markets with lower per-capita income and a media distribution infrastructure that is not as mature when compared to North America.  So, it’s not surprising that Bollywood and Nollywood have some catchup to do. However, there are now indications that the mobile revolution can help the content industry in both geographies. Mobile phones have rapidly caught on in both India and Sub-Saharan Africa, allowing them to largely skip building out wired telephone systems. Technology is now coming to the market with the potential to make the mobile device into a lucrative new media distribution platform.  

As a bit of background, the film industry generally makes its revenue through a variety of distribution channels. These include theaters, physical media (Blu-ray, DVD, etc.), hospitality (airlines, hotels, etc.), television (broadcast, cable, etc.), streaming/downloads over the Internet plus ancillary markets such as licensing to toy companies. Even in today’s increasingly digital market, theaters are an important market not only for revenue, but also to create that all important “buzz” around a new release.  One of the issues facing both Bollywood and Nollywood is the dearth of in-market theaters. Even with a population four times the size of the US population, India only has approximately 13,000 theaters compared to a bit over 40,000 in the US. It’s estimated that less than 4% of the Indian population regularly visits a theater. The situation is even worse for Nollywood with only 10 theaters in all of Nigeria. Nollywood has a DVD market but unfortunately, it’s mainly a pirate market with nine pirated copies sold for every legitimate DVD. 

Television is a brighter spot. According to Digital TV Research, for Sub-Saharan Africa in 2013 there were 20 million TV sets, forecasted to rise to 68 million by 2020. Still, even at that rate, TVs will only reach 38.4% of households. In India, according to a Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) report, TV penetration is around 60%. In both geographies, the expectations are that pay-TV subscription rates will grow over the next several years particularly for satellite TV. This would help bring in more revenue for both Bollywood and Nollywood.  Even so, it is clear that a significant part of the population will not have access to pay-TV for the foreseeable future.

Deciding the future of filmed content in Africa? (CC0 1.0 Universal)

Enter the Cheap Smartphone

Traditional distribution of Bollywood and Nollywood content will continue, but mobile holds much promise to become a new and valuable distribution platform.  Mobile is well on its way to becoming ubiquitous in both Sub-Saharan Africa and India. According to the GSMA, as of mid-2015 there were 386 million unique mobile subscribers in Sub-Saharan Africa for a penetration rate of 41%. This is forecasted to grow to 518 million by 2020, a penetration rate of 49%. Growth in India is expected be even faster, starting with 453 million 2014 and growing to 734 million in 2020.

Most any mobile phone in the market is capable of playing back digital video to some extent. But it is the smartphone, with its larger screen and easy to use interface, which is a better showcase for video. Smartphone manufacturers and technology developers are now competing to capture a part of these growing markets. One result of this competition is a marked decrease in smartphone pricing. The GSMA points out that sub-$100 smartphones were readily available in Sub-Saharan Africa (note that smartphones are typically not subsidized by carriers like in the US market). Google has developed the Android One smartphone aimed at emerging markets. It is already on sale in India and Google is planning on bringing down the cost to under Rs. 3000 (approximately $45) . One thing is certain, competition for the rapidly growing African and Indian markets will continue to drive smartphone pricing down. The upshot will be a continuing increase in market penetration of handsets capable of good quality video playback.

Kiora’s Content Hotspot

Video Distribution by Wi-Fi

If by now you’re saying, “But the type of high-speed connections needed to stream video to smartphones won’t be prevalent for years,” well, you have a point. This is where a startup called Kiora comes in. Kiora's technology design is premised on the fact that broadband infrastructure needed for OTT (over-the-top) Netflix-like video services won't be mature for some time in many markets. With this in mind, Kiora’s platform helps partners create “OTT-like” services which don’t need broadband connections. One of Kiora’s technologies is the “Content Hotspot” This consists of a appliance that caches video content for distribution at Wi-Fi hotspots.   The company also has a cloud-based backend service which manages the content licensing and integrates with various payment systems.

Kiora's Content Hotspot makes it simple for smartphone users (or any other Wi-Fi enabled device) to find and buy their favorite content when they connect to a Wi-Fi hotspot. When a user logs on, they'll see an option to visit an online store stocked with video content cached by at the hotspot. Since the connection between the device and the hotspot is likely to be high-speed, the user can easily download the content to their smartphone from the Kiora device. The backend service allows for a variety of payment methods, from paying cash to the hotspot proprietor to payments made through the carrier.

Kiora's customers are carriers and other network providers who see a video content distribution service as as an additional revenue stream. In September 2014, Kiora announced an agreement with SES Broadband Services, a satellite broadband provider, to roll out their content hotspots in Sub-Saharan Africa.

 According to Kiora’s CEO Prasad Sanagavarapu, this is just the beginning. “There is a lot of interest not only amongst African carriers, but also retail outlets. They see this as a way to get into the eco system of content sales and increase their reach to the ever growing number of mobile users..” Beyond Africa, Kiora also plans to bring Wi-Fi Content Hotspot services to India and other areas with less developed broadband infrastructure.

Mobile: A New Revenue Pillar for Local Content

Of course, to create a new video content distribution company, Kiora needs content. Kiora already has contracts with both Nollywood and Hollywood content aggregators for Sub-Saharan Africa and is working on similar relationships in India. One of the results of this is a partnership with a unique company based in Nigeria called SOLO. Launched in 2014, SOLO sells smartphones which also include a free subscription to SOLO Music for unlimited access to music as well as SOLO View, a VOD (video-on-demand) service and app giving access to both Nollywood and Hollywood video content.

Given the promise of the mobile video market, Kiora is unlikely to be the only entry to come up with unique solutions for these markets. As companies compete in mobile video distribution to fit local conditions, chances are high that someone will come up with the right mix to succeed. A successful and stable mobile distribution channel will not just give individuals the ability to enjoy local content whenever and wherever they want. It also holds the promise of increasing revenue for local content industries.

An interesting potential consequence of this is, with a new and hopefully stable and lucrative revenue stream, content creators in Africa and India should be able invest more in their work. One result could be higher production values and more investment in local talent, both in front of and behind the camera. If this comes about, mobile distribution could help bring about a new renaissance in video content, allowing African and Indian content creators to successfully compete on the world stage.

The annual National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show is less than a month away. NAB is not just for TV broadcasters, it is now one of the largest media events in the world. One of the themes at NAB is how the Internet continues to change the media landscape. Intertrust will be on the show floor at NAB, emphasizing how our products and technologies help bring what the Internet often lacks -- trust and security at the many points it touches within the digital entertainment ecosystem. We are also proud that Tim Schaaff, Intertrust’s chief product officer, has been selected to participate on a panel and speak as part of the Connected Media|IP technology focus at NAB.

Trust in the Ecosystem

Of course Intertrust will be exhibiting ExpressPlay, our cloud-based DRM solution, making it simple and affordable for organizations of any size to distribute protected digital content. Some of the discussion points will cover our solutions for supporting multiple DRM technologies, protecting 4K video content and providing watermarking. We will also be featuring some of our other products that bring trust in other ways to the digital ecosystem.

One of those is the whiteCryption app security product line. whiteCryption’s products protect app source code from reverse engineering and tampering by bad actors. whiteCryption products are used in the automotive and other industries to protect apps. For the digital entertainment industry, mobile app security is crucial as apps are showing up at many points in the content ecosystem, including production, post-production and consumption. First, it is important to secure apps for consuming video to prevent the piracy of valuable content and protect other secrets in the code. Apps are also increasingly used at other points on the content creation side. These include controlling the drones increasingly used to shoot video, traditional digital video cameras, working with the “previz” scenes used by directors, video editing systems, and so on. At each of these points, apps directly touch on sensitive information and content that the industry needs to secure.

Data has always been important to the entertainment industry. The increasing use of mobile apps and IoT by consumers represents a new source of audience data valued for both advertising as well as content recommendation. Our audience data platform, Personagraph, can help gather this data, organize it into useful categories, and provide a mechanism for monetizing the protected content. What Personagraph also does is ensure that in the process the data is handled in such a way that respects individual privacy and gives companies control over the data as well.

How Content Protection and Emerging Markets Go Together

Schaaff will be speaking at a couple of sessions. He will be joining a panel discussion debating the current state of the mobile video market and the technologies that will bring it forward. He will also be giving a talk on  emerging markets such as China and India.

If you are attending NAB this year, do drop on by and find out more. We’ll be in the Connected Media | IP pavilion in booth #SU10002CM.

Immediately before the major security industry event the recent RSA Conference 2016, in a follow-up to a previous speaking engagement, Intertrust was honored again to speak at an event in San Francisco sponsored by CbyerTECH entitled “Securing the Internet of Things.” Representing Intertrust on a panel called “Securing Emerging Technologies: 3D Printers, Robots, and Drones” was Intertrust VP of Product Management Vivek Palan. Much of the panel discussion centered on what many of the panelists considered to be an essential motivator for security and privacy in IoT: policy and regulations. As one of the panelists Sid Shetye from Crypteron said, “If there is no regulation or policy, than there will be no security built in.”

There was agreement on the panel that much of the need for policy and regulations around IoT stemmed from the explosion of sensitive data emanating from IoT devices. One example discussed was of an app that tracks the location of a person using data from the sensors in a smartphone. It was pointed out that the same sensors, including a microphone, are available in smartwatches. In the example given, an innocent user might fall under suspicion just for being in the same location as some “bad actors.” Considering the privacy and security implications of data generated from drones, thermostats, connected video cameras, and the like., Vivek said, “Technology capabilities far surpass laws and ethical guidelines.”

Intertrust’s Vivek Palan (furthest to the left) and Stealth Worker’s Ken Baylor (furthest to the right) discuss a point at CyberTECH’s “Securing the Internet of Things” event.

Data Bill of Rights

Ken Baylor from Stealth Worker discussed how the ever increasing capacities of hard disk drives means the vast amounts of sensitive data that IoT devices can generate could be stored for an indeterminate amount of time. “Data will never die unless legally forced to die.” These and other issues around IoT data such as defining ownership of the data, clarification of what data is being collected, how it is being used, and so on, can be addressed by privacy policies. The point, however, was made that these policies are written by lawyers for lawyers and are difficult for average people to understand, even if they look at them at all.

Given this situation, Vivek predicted that at some point there will be a “Data Bill of Rights.” Ideally, this would be a commonly accepted framework identifying the rights of individuals over the data being collected about them. “It would clarify what is acceptable in the use of this data and the rights to have that data secured.”

Having a Data Bill of Rights in this digital age does make sense. In fact, the vast and always increasing amounts of data collected on individuals combined with a legal framework largely developed in an analog age show the obvious need for this sort of policy. Of course, actually framing and implementing such a document is a massive and difficult undertaking. The data protection laws put in place by the European Union are considered to be the most advanced and friendly toward individual rights. On the other hand, Vivek pointed out, “Entrepreneurs in Europe are frustrated they can't move as fast as they would like, and they can't do free services.” As regulators and industry grope their way forward in defining data rights in the 21st century, finding the right balance for both individuals and organizations will continue to be contentious and difficult work. Still, with the deluge of IoT data on its way, there is no time to lose.

Intertrust Technologies created the Sunnyvale MI3: Mobile Ideas Inspire Innovation meetups to provide mobile innovators with opportunities to work collaboratively and connect with other like-minded professionals. If you are a developer, designer, CEO, investor, or corporation seeking to achieve mobile innovation through collaboration, then the MI3 meetups are for you.

The MI3 meetups are designed to support the mobile innovation community by supporting a network of experienced professionals and corporate partners to exchange best practices and ideas. This and upcoming events will provide opportunities to showcase new technologies and to network. 

Details about the First MI3 Meetup

Cost: Free!

Who’s invited: developers, investors, corporate partners, CEOs, entrepreneurs                                    

When: Tuesday, February 24, 2015 (future dates TBD)

Time: 6-8 pm

Location: 920 Stewart Drive, Suite 100, Sunnyvale, CA 94085

What to Expect at the First MI3 Meetup

Each event will begin with networking refreshments and food, and will feature demonstrations from five to six startups and a keynote address from a guest speaker. Mobile innovators will also have the opportunity to introduce themselves to the entire group and to post banners.

Intertrust and its subsidiaries will also have a variety of announcements to make about upcoming meetups and other events. The MI3 meetups will take place approximately every two months in February, April, June, and so forth. Exact future meetup dates and locations are to be determined. 

We are now accepting applications to demo and/or speak at our first event. Please join our MI3 meetup group today for more information and to fill out the short application.

Please follow us on Twitter @intertrusttech and LinkedIn for the latest MI3 meetup information!

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Sponsored by the NITRD Big Data Senior Steering Group in conjunction with Georgetown University, this workshop will bring together a small number of academics and industry leaders across multiple disciplines to further inform the development of an effective Federal Big Data Research Agenda. Invitation only, see http://workshops.cs.georgetown.edu/BDSI-2015 for more information. The workshop will bring together a small number of academics and industry partners to develop a Federal Big Data Research Agenda. 
The workshop planning committee is led by Professor Lisa Singh (GU); and invited speakers and panelists include Andrew Moore (CMU), Magda Balazinska (UW), Michael Carey (UC Irvine), and Sastry Pantula (Oregon State).

More information is available at NITRD Workshop website.

with Intertrust's Latest Mobile Security Solutions, Showcased at MWC 2015 (Hall 8, 0F15)

If you're concerned about losing subscribers through data breaches or unmanaged content delivery on mobile devices, or interested in increasing monetization through mobile adtech, join us at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona for demonstrations of our latest mobile content management, Internet security, and data privacy technologies.

We will demonstrate: 

• Easy to implement yet secure content management system from ExpressPlay for mobile apps and services. We will also showcase live services such as France's MYTF1VOD based on the HbbTV 1.5 specification (with MPEG DASH) and Marlin DRM. 

• New privacy-based, user understanding platform Personagraph Monetize, Key features include:

• • Real-time mediation
  • Audience data overlay
  • Data transparency

• Robust Internet and application security solutions from whiteCryption to maximize enterprise-level mobile application security, avoid unwanted alteration and intellectual property theft, protect cryptographic keys and data within an application, and prevent reverse engineering. Two products include:

• • Secure Key Box featuring white-box cryptography and how to keep cryptographic keys secret at all times.
  • Code Protection used to "harden" software application code and prevent reverse-engineering and tampering.

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W. Knox Carey, Vice President, Technology Initiatives, Intertrust

Given the substantial privacy risks, human genetic data is one of the most sensitive data types to handle online, yet the potential benefits of opening this data to worldwide researchers are substantial. Based on experience in designing a service to do just this, this session will detail the legal and institutional hurdles that need to be overcome to effectively open repositories of genetic data to online access by researchers. We will compare and contrast several examples of how to create a system that can comply with regulatory and institutional requirements yet allow access to genetic data online.

What you’ll takeaway:

·     Understanding of regulatory and institutional frameworks around online release of genetic data

·     Understanding of potential technological approaches 

At the IAPP Europe Data Protection Congress 2014 in Brussels on November 19th-20th

SQUARE - Brussels Meeting Centre
rue Mont des Arts
B-1000 Brussels
+32 02.515.1300

Slush is an annual, non-profit event that has grown from having only 300 attendees, into one of the largest mega-conferences that attracts over 10,000 startups, investors, media, and executives worldwide. This year, this event will take place at the Exhibition and Convention Center of Helsinki (Messukeskus) in Helsinki, Finland (again) from November 18th-19th, 2014. The convention center is located at Messuaukio 1, 00520 Helsinki. Noteworthy speakers this year include dozens of political leaders, CEO’s, CTO’s, and more, including Wang Jian, CTO of Alibaba and Bruce Oreck, United States Ambassador to Finland.

Personagraph is one of the first thousand startups attending Slush this year, and one of the few selected to provide demos of its groundbreaking services, which it will do on November 18th at one of the designated demo booths. It will be demonstrating its audience intelligence dashboard, how it helps users customers understand who their most valued users are, and delivers personalized content and advertising while protecting consumer privacy. Anyone who has not registered for Slush yet should do so; anyone already attending this unique event should certainly make time to view these demos.

About Personagraph     

Personagraph™ is a young Silicon Valley startup that provides its customers with descriptive data to help understand and engage with people on mobile platforms. What is unique about Personagraph is that people can trust it with even their private data because that data never leaves a secure area and only the people whose data it is, can modify it and control who sees it. Moreover, the data is processed according to a rubric that optimizes the customer’s monetization goals.

Personagraph helps its customers gather more detailed knowledge about the likes and behavior patterns of the people that use their mobile apps, without compromising anyone’s privacy. By collecting signals from the customer’s app as well as other apps on people’s phones, and using machine learning to process this information, Personagraph is able to generate fertile individual profiles. Its customers can run a tighter, more efficient business by focusing on the high-value consumer profiles to reduce acquisition costs and boost engagement.

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If you plan to be in Brussels this November and are interested in taking a deep dive into issues surrounding the governance of piracy, you should attend the IAPP Europe Data Protection Congress 2014. One of the highlights of the event (in our humble opinion) will be a chance to hear Intertrust’s own Knox Carey discuss privacy and genetic data in the cloud. Knox will be speaking in the Privacy and Technology breakout session on Thursday, November 20th from 10:30-11:30 am. He will speak about “Preserving Privacy for Genetic Data in the Cloud”.

Registration is now open for the IAPP Europe Data Protection Congress 2014 being held in Brussels from November 18th to 20th,  2014. Focusing on privacy and governance issues surround the topic, the Data Protection Congress promises to be a fascinating and exciting event bringing together policy leaders with business and technology professionals. Keynote speakers include Luca De Matteis, Justice Counsellor (Cooperation in Criminal Matters and Data Protection), Permanent Representation of Italy to the EU, Julie Brill, Commissioner with the US Federal Trade Commission and Mikko Hypponen, Chief Research Officer at F-Secure.

Knox Carey is the Vice President of Technology Initiatives at Intertrust. He leads Intertrust’s Genecloud initiative, which strives to make sensitive genetic data and health information accessible to responsible parties who solve difficult health problems while respecting privacy and legal frameworks.