Stopping Piracy During Production
Now that we have discussed how a company can protect their content during development we should look at the next logical part of protecting one’s products: content protection during production.
The first step is ensuring that you know your manufacturers and can trust their own internal security measures. Most product leaks occur because someone at a replication facility made a copy of the product and spread it via the internet. Do not be afraid to investigate and ask questions before outsourcing. One solution to the risks of outsourcing is to keep as much production possible done internally. For every link in the chain you add (in terms of outside production) you increase the risk of your products being pirated and you not being able to track down the potential source and limit damage.
This leads us to the second step: tracking your products during production. If you have to outsource your production (and even if you handle your production internally) you should be able to track who is doing what during the production phase and when they are doing it. While people can gain access to a console or a locked drawer, the logging of products can help reduce the risk by simply making it harder for people and increasing the likelihood that they will be caught. New products are being developed that allow for a digital watermark that is unseen to the human eye and for low costs too, which makes tracking people even easier. In short making sure you know and trust your manufacturers and keeping track of your products during production are two key steps to preventing piracy of your company’s products.
