GeoComply Solutions Inc. announced that SHIFT72, whose video streaming platform is the premier choice for film festivals, cinemas and film distributors worldwide, has integrated the award-winning GeoGuard VPN and proxy detection solution to better protect its customers’ high-value, territorially-restricted content from geolocation fraud and geo-piracy.

GeoGuard is Hollywood studio approved and third-party tested to be 99.6% effective in detecting the most popular VPNs. Recent important enhancements to GeoGuard include the ability to detect even the most sophisticated spoofing methods such as hijacked residential IPs, Proxy-Over-VPN attacks and the use of IPv6 addresses to mask a viewer’s true location. 

“The worst possible time that piracy can occur is when content is in the pre-release or early distribution stage, which exactly describes our customer base,” says Simon Crutchley, VP of Content and Acquisitions at SHIFT72. “The rapid acceleration of premium Video On Demand and the massive interest from film festivals who were forced online, has driven an increase in rights holders’ security requirements. We chose GeoGuard as it is the industry standard for VPN and proxy detection and ensures our customer’s content is protected from territorial leakage and geolocation fraud.”

“SHIFT72’s focus on early release, super premium content makes it imperative they’re utilizing the industry’s best solutions in their content protection tech stack,” says James Clark, Director of Global Sales at GeoComply. “SHIFT72’s customers expect the highest level of compliance in regards to geo-restrictions and by deploying GeoGuard, media rights holders can trust SHIFT72 to meet their stringent content protection requirements.” 

GeoGuard is used by the top streaming video platforms, OTT broadcasters and sports leagues worldwide to protect against geo-piracy and geolocation fraud caused by the use of VPNs and DNS proxies to circumvent geographical restrictions on content. Our award-winning solution is pre-integrated with leading content delivery networks (CDNs) including Akamai and Amazon CloudFront, enabling customers to simply “turn on” VPN and proxy detection. GeoGuard is updated multiple times each day, ensuring the lowest rate of false positives and false negatives.

The use of VPNs and DNS proxies to spoof a user’s location in order to access geographically restricted content is on the rise. In fact, 37% of all internet users are using VPNs, mainly to access restricted content, according to a survey by the Global Web Index.