7 Useful Options for Content Protection

8 September 2022

A contemporary CDN service provides more than just extensive worldwide coverage, good connectivity, top-notch speed, and an easy-to-use management panel. No matter how quickly content is delivered, it should always be safe and simple to control. In the modern web, we provide 7 choices for safe content delivery. Some of them were prompted by particular client demands.

1. Access by Countries

Access to content can be limited to any number of countries.

Make sure that your webinars are available only to residents of the USA and Canada or available to everyone, except for viewers from China. To do this, set an allowing or blocking policy for specific countries.

2. Access by Domains

Sometimes it is necessary to limit using of valuable content on the third-party sites. To do this, allow or deny access to the content for specific domains.

3. Access by IP-addresses

Access to content can also be restricted to certain IP addresses.

4. User Agent’s Policy

CDN content can be inaccessible for user agents (for a specific browser or device).

Default Restrictions

By default, no access restrictions are applied to countries, domains, IP addresses, and applications.

API for Restriction Lists

For large-scale access restrictions (list of countries, domains, IP addresses and user agents), use the API. In the control panel, you can add countries, domains, IP addresses and user-agents one by one.

5. Secure Token

Content can be protected from unwanted downloads. With Secure Token content can be downloaded only if a request contains a hash key.

A token (hash key) is the result of a one-way hash function MD5 (String), where String is the parameter obtained by merging the following elements (in the specified sequence):

<expires><path><ip><key>:

<expires>: Link expiration time in the UNIX Timestamp
<path>: The original link to the
<key>: A key that contains from 6 to 32
<IP>: IP addresses for which access to the file is allowed (the parameter is optional).

6. Allowed HTTP Methods

Content requests can be controlled with HTTP methods.

By default, GET, HEAD, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, OPTIONS methods are allowed. We recommend to leave at least GET, HEAD and POST methods in the field.

7. Access-Control-Allow-Origin Header

Content can be protected from using in third-party applications. For example, limit using of unique video content in competitors’ players on their sites.

The option uses the CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing) technology, which restricts content to browsers if the request does not contain the desired header. (Players will not be able to play the content if the CDN headers do not contain a CORS header.)

When the option is activated, you can add a header to all requests or to requests from certain domains (up to 5 domains).