Articles by ECE’s Michael Zink and Colleagues Describe Pioneering Encryption Method for Video Streaming Services

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Professor Michael Zink of the UMass Amherst Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department has teamed up with two other colleagues to publish a pair of groundbreaking articles – circulated by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and Kudos – that present a simpler and more efficient way for the encryption of video streaming services. 

As Zink and his colleagues explain in a paper published by the ACM on March 31, 2025, their research “introduces an alternate approach for encrypting video streams using attribute-based encryption (ABE), focusing on securing the data rather than the connection between streaming endpoints.” 

Zink and his collaborators also posted an article on the Kudos website based on this ACM paper, but geared towards a popular audience. Zink collaborated with his ECE Ph.D. Graduate Research Assistant Mohammad Waquas Usmani (the lead author) and Assistant Professor Susmit Shannigrahi of Tennessee Tech University on the trailblazing research that the team described in the ACM and Kudos pieces.

According to the Kudos article, “When you watch videos on streaming services like Netflix or Disney+, your device connects securely to servers using encryption, which protects videos from unauthorized viewing. However, this method requires a lot of work from servers and caches because videos must be encrypted individually for every connection.”

As the Kudos article explains, “Our research introduces a simpler and more efficient way: We encrypt the videos themselves just once, instead of encrypting each connection separately. This means videos can be stored safely in many places without needing to be encrypted again for each viewer.” 

Zink and his colleagues go on to say that their new approach greatly reduces the computational drain on servers and caches, making streaming quicker, less-expensive, and more scalable. At the same time, ABE provides “fine-grained control” over who can access what content, enabling flexible and efficient access management.

“We validated our approach through extensive real-world testing,” as the researchers explain, “showing up to 50-percent reduction in server and cache CPU [central-process-unit] usage while maintaining high video quality and user experience.”

As the Kudos article describes the process of the new method, “Users are given special keys based on their permissions, allowing them to easily unlock only the videos they’re allowed to see. If someone’s access needs to be removed, we simply take away or change the key, without needing to re-encrypt the videos.” 

The team concludes that “This new way of handling video security could help streaming services become faster, more efficient, and less expensive to operate, all while maintaining robust protection of video content.” 

Zink is also the co-director of the graduated National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA), the principal investigator of the Massachusetts Open Cloud (MOC), the Paros Professor of Geophysical Sensing Systems, the co-director of the Paros Center for Atmospheric Research, and an adjunct in the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences. (June 2025)