Grass Valley Triumphs Over Application Piracy with Digital.ai Application Security

In the fast-paced world of media and entertainment, Grass Valley has been a trusted name for over 60 years, providing cutting-edge production solutions to 90% of the world’s major media brands. However, with great success comes greater challenges, particularly in the realm of cybersecurity.

Grass Valley’s flagship product, EDIUS, had become the go-to editing software for professionals and enthusiasts alike. Its powerful yet user-friendly capabilities made it a prime target for piracy and unauthorized modifications. This not only resulted in financial losses but also eroded customer trust and hampered the development team’s ability to innovate.

Nobumasa Tamaoki, Director of Software Engineering in Editing Systems at Grass Valley, explained the gravity of the situation: “Piracy was not only a financial loss for us, but also impacted the trust of our customers who had purchased our software at a fair price.” The constant need to defend against piracy was draining resources and diverting attention from product enhancement.

Enter Digital.ai Application Security, a game-changing solution that has revolutionized Grass Valley’s approach to software protection. Since implementing this robust security measure, Grass Valley has reported zero crack attempts on the protected parts of their application.

The impact of this transformation has been profound:

• Revenue Protection: By effectively curbing piracy, Grass Valley has seen a significant improvement in revenues, particularly in key markets.
• Enhanced Productivity: Freed from the burden of developing endless module protections, the engineering team can now focus on innovation and adding value to EDIUS.
• Boosted Morale: The shift from defensive tactics to proactive development has reinvigorated the team, fostering a more positive and productive work environment.
• Strengthened Brand Image: Perhaps most crucially, the implementation of Digital.ai Application Security has bolstered Grass Valley’s reputation for delivering safe, secure, and trustworthy software.

Digital.ai Application Security employs a multi-faceted approach to protect Grass Valley’s software:

• Obfuscation: This technique automatically rearranges and reconfigures source code, making it significantly harder for potential attackers to understand and exploit.
• Monitoring: The solution provides real-time alerts when the application is run in a compromised environment, allowing for swift action.
• Self-protection: Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP) is integrated into the application, enabling immediate action against detected tampering without human intervention.

Tamaoki praised the efficiency and effectiveness of the solution, noting its seamless integration into their CI/CD pipeline. “For the critical parts of our application, we use strong protections that include mutual authentication of modules,” he explained. “For the less critical parts, we use simple protection. It’s a very efficient and effective solution.”

The results speak for themselves. Since implementing Digital.ai Application Security, Grass Valley has not received a single report of cracking attacks that modify binary modules. This achievement has not only safeguarded their revenue but has also allowed the company to refocus on what truly matters: innovation and customer satisfaction.

In an industry where trust is paramount, Grass Valley’s investment in robust application security has paid dividends. As Tamaoki succinctly put it, “The net benefit all comes down to one word: trust.”

Are you facing similar challenges in protecting your software from piracy and unauthorized modifications? Discover how Digital.ai Application Security can transform your approach to software protection and build unshakeable customer trust.

Download the full Grass Valley case study or watch this video testimonial to learn more about their journey and how Digital.ai can help secure your applications against today’s sophisticated threats.