Day: April 20, 2022

Linear-like control enables media companies to sell premium inventory direct to advertisers ― raising eCPMs and fill rates ― and keep more ad revenue, while reducing total cost of ownership

Denver, April 20, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Imagine Communications today announced the addition of SureFire™ video ad server to its suite of monetization solutions, addressing decade-old gaps in the cost, yield, and quality of advertising on digital video streams. The game-changing product will be shown for the first time at the 2022 NAB Show (24–27 April, Las Vegas Convention Center, booth C2122).

SureFire provides the linear-like control and brand protection needed to directly sell inventory on OTT platforms, enabling media companies to sell and fulfil campaigns across their entire audience. It also enables media companies to lower overall costs by eliminating silos, while increasing margins and keeping more ad revenue via direct sales ― eliminating intermediaries that take a percentage of revenue.

The result is more revenue, higher eCPM prices and improved fill rates, as well as a great advertiser and viewer experience.

“Digital video advertising is growing rapidly, by as much as 50% according to some sources,” says Brad Herman, senior vice president, product, at Imagine Communications. “But we don’t think that the monetization is as effective or safe as it has been for linear TV.”

While multiplatform content delivery is fast becoming ubiquitous, quick digital deployments have led many media companies to deploy separate ad management systems for OTT and traditional linear, which is expensive, inefficient and often results in a poor experience for both viewers and advertisers. SureFire, combined with Imagine’s unified monetization solution, consolidates cross-platform workflows, enabling media companies to increase revenue opportunities, reduce total cost of ownership (TCO), and deliver a consistent, quality experience for streaming OTT and VOD.

Viewers and advertisers desire a quality, linear-like advertising experience across all video platforms and devices; however, brand rules, such as frequency or competitive separation, are often not enforced on OTT platforms. SureFire enables common, broadcast advertising rules across OTT and traditional linear, providing a unified premium ad experience for viewers wherever they consume content.

SureFire operates as a managed cloud service on Amazon Web Services (AWS), so it has flexibility and scale to meet the needs of any media company. Auto-scaling enables SureFire to support millions of ad requests per second, with sub-100ms response times even under heavy load. It uses the advertising industry-standard VAST and VMAP protocols to communicate dynamic ad insertion instructions with AWS Elemental MediaTailor.

Using open APIs, SureFire has been pre-integrated with Imagine’s Landmark™ Sales ad management platform, providing media companies a smooth path to unified monetization of OTT and linear TV. SureFire is also fully compatible with the recently announced Imagine Aviator™ cloud-native, unified origination and monetization platform, providing broadcast-quality ad decisions to monetize OTT and FAST channels created by Aviator.

“All the projections for advertising suggest that linear television revenues are relatively flat,” Herman adds. “In order to thrive, media companies must find a way of capturing the premium values of linear television and applying it to their digital advertising — maintaining brand values and aggregating audiences across all platforms. SureFire is designed to deliver against these needs.”

The first customer deployments of SureFire are expected in the summer of 2022.

During the 2022 NAB Show, Brad Herman will host “The Importance of Creating a Linear-Like Advertising Experience for Connected TV” (Sunday, April 24, 1:00-1:30 p.m. PT, Capitalize Inspiration Zone), a panel discussion on the challenges in addressable OTT cloud monetization and best practices to support premium advertising.

For more information about Imagine Communications’ products and solutions, please visit https://www.imaginecommunications.com

About Imagine Communications

Imagine Communications empowers the media and entertainment industry through transformative innovation. Broadcasters, networks, video service providers and enterprises around the world rely on our optimized, futureproof, multiscreen video and revenue enablement solutions every day to support their mission-critical operations. Today, nearly half of the world’s video channels traverse our products, and our software solutions drive close to a third of global ad revenue. Through continuous innovation, we are delivering the most advanced IP, cloud-enabled, software-defined network and workflow solutions in the industry. Visit https://www.imaginecommunications.com for more information, and follow us on Twitter @imagine_comms.

Attachment

• Imagine Communications’ SureFire

Meriam Khan
PR agency of Imagine Communications
+44 (0) 7768 022162
[email protected]

Zoom highlights recent security and privacy efforts with new global third-party certifications and product features

SAN JOSE, Calif., April 20, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Zoom Video Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: ZM) today announced it has recently received a variety of third-party certifications and attestations, unveiled product innovations, and established programs, which collectively demonstrate the many initiatives undertaken at Zoom that help protect the security and privacy of its users.

“Safety, security, and privacy are at the core of how we make decisions at Zoom and enhance our platform,” said Jason Lee, Chief Information Security Officer at Zoom. “We remain committed to being a platform that users can trust for all of their online interactions, information, and business.”

Third-party certifications and attestations demonstrate effectiveness
At Zoom, third-party certifications and standards are integral to its security program’s foundation. Zoom recently expanded its list of growing attestations with the following:

• Publication of a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) on Zoom’s Meetings, Webinar, and Chat services from SURF. SURF, the collaborative organization for IT in Dutch education and research, and Zoom agreed to several actions in the course of collaborating on the DPIA. These include new features, improved transparency and documentation, enhanced practices, and a measurement plan. Learn more about the outcomes here.
• Achievement of the Cyber Essentials Plus certification. This demonstrates Zoom’s commitment to the UK by achieving a security scheme, which makes it easier for local customers to assess the company’s IT systems. Learn more about this certification here.
• Provisional Authorization (PA) for Zoom for Government from Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) for the Department of Defense (DoD) at Impact Level 4 (IL4). With this PA, the entire Zoom for Government platform will be available for use for those organizations in need of IL4-authorized solutions. Learn more about this authorization here.
• Common Criteria Certification. The Zoom Meeting Client is the first video communications client to attain certification for Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level 2 (v3.1 rev. 5), issued by the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI). Learn more about the certification here.
• ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certification and SOC 2 + HITRUST requirements. Zoom Meetings, Zoom Phone, Zoom Chat, Zoom Rooms, and Zoom Webinar are now certified as International Organization for Standardization (ISO) / International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 27001:2013 compliant. Zoom also expanded the scope of its SOC 2 Type II report to include additional criteria to meet Health Information Trust Alliance Common Security Framework (HITRUST CSF) control requirements. Learn more here.

Features designed for security and privacy
In addition, Zoom continues to enhance its security features for all users with the introduction of recent innovations such as automatic updates in the Zoom client. With automatic updates, Zoom is helping users to receive important security fixes and other features, improving their overall experience with the Zoom platform.

Innovations that will soon be available include a Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) offering, which will be released this year, and Zoom’s end-to-end encryption (E2EE) offering will be rolled out to Zoom Phone, for one-on-one, intra-account phone calls that occur via the Zoom client later this year.

Industry collaboration for a more secure future
To meet the growing needs of its global customer base, Zoom has established programs that bring in expertise and skills from around the world to inform security innovation and identify potential threats. These include a CISO Council to foster a strategic feedback loop for upcoming security and privacy innovation, and the development of a Data Security and Protection (DSP) Toolkit in support of the National Health Service (NHS). Additionally, Zoom offers bespoke solutions for specific audiences across industries and locations, such as:

• Zoom X powered by Telekom. Zoom and Deutsche Telekom committed to developing a joint solution specifically for the German market called Zoom X powered by Telekom, which combines the experience customers love from Zoom with the trusted network and service delivered by Deutsche Telekom. Leveraging Zoom’s seamless video communications platform, customers are enabled to set up and manage meetings intuitively across all end devices.
• Zoom for Government. Zoom for Government, which is designed for U.S. federal agencies, is also available to U.S. state and local government customers, as well as other approved businesses and organizations that support the U.S. government. Zoom for Government includes 256-bit AES-GCM encryption as well as optional end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for Zoom Meetings. The Zoom for Government platform (which includes Zoom Meetings, Zoom Webinar, Zoom Chat, and Zoom Phone) has achieved the following:
  • FedRAMP Moderate authorization in February 2019
  • An Authorization to Operate with Conditions (ATO-C) at Department of Defense Impact Level 4 (DoD IL4) for Zoom Meetings with the Department of the U.S. Air Force in June 2021
  • A Provisional Authorization from the Defense Information Systems Agency for DoD IL4 in March 2022
  • A Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) attestation in January 2022
  • A HIPAA attestation in March 2021

Tapping into the power of the security community
In addition to the daily testing that Zoom conducts on its solutions and infrastructure, Zoom invested in a skilled global team of security researchers via a private bug bounty program. Hosted on HackerOne’s platform, the world’s most trusted provider of ethical hacking solutions, the program led to the recruitment of over 800 security researchers whose collective work resulted in the submission of numerous bug reports, and awards of over $2.4 million in bug bounty payments since the program was introduced. In 2021 alone, Zoom awarded over $1.8 million across 401 reports.

Furthering education on Zoom security and privacy features
Zoom keeps privacy and security top of mind for all end users. Zoom launched its Trust Center, a one-stop shop for assets and information on Zoom compliance, privacy, safety, and security. It includes compliance and corporate governance resources, a detailed privacy overview, security resources and certifications, a detailed trust and safety overview, and more. Zoom also recently introduced its Learning Center, which provides a series of free courses to get the most out of Zoom. Users can complete a “Zoom Security Basics” training and earn the “Security Champion” badge. The Zoom Trust Center and Learning Center also contain information on Zoom’s security features and how to keep meetings secure. This includes pre-meeting and in-meeting settings such as passwords set at the individual meeting, user, group, or account level; meeting Waiting Rooms; the ability to lock a meeting, remove, mute or place participants on hold; and much more.

To learn more about Zoom privacy and security, explore Zoom’s Trust Center.

About Zoom
Zoom is for you. Zoom is a space where you can connect to others, share ideas, make plans, and build toward a future limited only by your imagination. Our frictionless communications platform is the only one that started with video as its foundation, and we have set the standard for innovation ever since. That is why we are an intuitive, scalable, and secure choice for individuals, small businesses, and large enterprises alike. Founded in 2011, Zoom is publicly traded (NASDAQ: ZM) and headquartered in San Jose, California. Visit zoom.com and follow @zoom.

Zoom Public Relations
Matt Nagel
Security & Privacy PR Lead
[email protected]