Premier League signs security partnership with Friend MTS

The English Premier League has entered into a partnership with content and platform security provider Friend MTS in an effort to protect live broadcasts of the club football competition in regions around the world.

According to various reports, Friend MTS will use its global internet monitoring system and network forensics capabilities to protect streams on over-the-top and TV Everywhere streams worldwide.

Friend MTS will identify where weaknesses in the broadcast set-up lie and will inform the Premier League of such issues.

Friend MTS already has a partnership in place with Sky, the UK pay-television broadcaster that owns a host of media rights to the Premier League.

Jonathan Friend, chief executive of Friend MTS, said: “By making it harder for licensed services to become sources for piracy, and preventing cascading cases of ‘pirates pirating pirates’, this degrades the quality of illegitimate services and reduces the economic threat to rights holders.”