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Azure Media Services – Certified for CDSA

The Azure Media Services CSMS has been validated by a CDSA-appointed external auditor and as a result Microsoft has been awarded certification to this Standard.

The Content Delivery and Security Association (CDSA) is a worldwide forum advocating the innovative and responsible delivery and storage of entertainment, software, and information content. The CDSA’s Content Protection & Security (CPS) Standard forms the basis of a Content Security Management System (CSMS) providing guidance and requirements to secure media assets. The standard details a set of controls designed to ensure the continued integrity of intellectual property, confidentiality, and media asset security, at all stages of the supply chain.

This standard is auditable and once a system is validated through an external (appointed) auditor, the CDSA issues a certificate of compliance with the CPS program. To maintain compliance the certified entity must submit the results of annual audits to the CDSA.

The Azure Media Services CSMS has been validated by a CDSA-appointed external auditor and as a result Microsoft has been awarded certification to this Standard. In order to obtain this certification Azure Media Services was required to demonstrate proof of a risk assessment against the CPS standard requirements, as well as a comprehensive “Statement of Applicability” or SoA that articulated the breadth and depth of robust content protection features that Azure Media Services provides to protect content throughout and across the digital media supply chain. Azure Media Services is the only cloud media platform in the market that can offer encryption on the fly for both Video-On-Demand and live streaming broadcasts. Azure Media Services provides a number of secure upload channels for content including the ExpressRoute private network connection to Azure, UDP upload via the Aspera client and secure HTTPS upload over the Internet.

CDSA certification enables you as a customer to confidently use Azure Media Services platform to process premium media content in the cloud. This eliminates the need for you to have on-premises hardware, security and auditing of facilities where premium media is processed. In other words, Azure Media Services takes over the burden for your media workflows that require CDSA audit and certification. This opens up the opportunity for you to pursue a cloud based business model for your premium media processing services.

Microsoft Azure Media Services is the only hyper-cloud platform built to handle the broadest selection of industry digital media workflows including content creation, production, distribution, and exhibition. The CPS certification provides a standards-based method of assuring our customers and yours that the intellectual property rights of media assets stored, managed, and distributed from within Azure are safe and secure. Further, Azure’s CPS certification can be utilized within your own CPS certification effort. The CPS certification audit is administered directly by the CDSA and consists of over 300 distinct security controls that help secure and manage physical data centers, harden services and storage facilities, all optimized to handle sensitive and valuable media assets.

The initial certification status is valid for 6 months, after which subsequent (successful) audits extend the certification period for one year. Microsoft is committed to continuing the annual CDSA audits, as well as maintaining internal audits and controls to retain CPS certification.

Microsoft implements a comprehensive continuous compliance program for Microsoft Azure, including controls to address the requirements of this standard, ISO/IEC 27001:2013, ISO 27018, FedRAMP, EU Model Clause, SOC1, SOC2 and many other regulations and certifications relevant to our customers.

 

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