4 Steps to Secure Video for Internal Communications

Remote work has become more prevalent than ever. Many workers are doing their jobs from home full-time or part-time. One survey found that 62% of employees now work remotely at least some of the time and 92% expect to be able to work from home at least one day a week.

A modern internal communications strategy has to be ready for the reality of a hybrid work environment. Internal communications that could be done in office at a town hall meeting or a conference room now take place on Zoom. New employee onboarding can’t always be done in person, and even company culture has to transform to a digital-first experience in many cases.

Further, internal communications can be difficult to juggle with a distributed workforce. When you want to make sure that teams are aligned on company objectives, resources, processes, and big milestones, it’s important to get the message across effectively. Otherwise, company culture can start to fragment and silos become a real challenge.

Video is a powerful way to make sure that everyone in the company can still feel connected, whether they’re working in the office, at home, or on the road. But when sensitive internal information is shared, it’s also important for secure video to be integral to every new communication.

The Importance of Securing Video for Internal Communications

Would you want a competitor to see your onboarding video on YouTube? Or your engineering town hall? How about a brand strategy session from the leadership team?

The answer is probably no. For most collateral in companies, security is easy. You can store documents and spreadsheets on a secure cloud platform accessible by VPN or keep sensitive customer data secured in a customer relationship management system.

Videos, since they’re often produced by many different teams, can end up on channels where security isn’t quite as easy. Internal comms teams want to make sure that every relevant video is accessible – but not too accessible. Both internally and externally, access matters, whether it’s a new company direction or just a training video, secure video should be the foundation for your internal communications video strategy.

Here’s how to make sure you can develop engaging videos that are both accessible and secure for your entire workforce:

1. Keep Videos in a Secure Platform.

Password-protected streaming or social media websites can often be the go-to place for an internal comms video strategy. But if employees leave the company, are cookied at a public computer, or have credentials for confidential videos, sensitive internal communications could be accessed outside the organization.

Finding a video platform for internal communications with built-in security can keep employee access streamlined, making videos more accessible and more secure.

2. Build User Permission Tiers for Video Access.

Ensure you have control to set correct viewer access rights based on the category of video.

Common categories for internal communication videos can include:

• Town Halls
• Training Sessions
• Workshops
• Employee Experience
• Culture
• New Hire
• Department-Specific Announcements
• Leadership Strategy
• Mentorship
• Corporate Responsibility
• Legal

When you know the access tiers for each video category, you can use a video platform to assign administrative access to internal comms leaders and configure role-based access for other users.

3. Enable Single Sign-On (SSO) for Video Communications.

Single Sign-On (SSO) support can guarantee that employees can access a third-party platform with the same email and password they’re already using with the company. This helps verify the identity of video viewers and allows them to seamlessly log in and engage with video content.

For maximum security, your video solution should map identity to the full email address, including user domain (i.e. johnsmith@company.com), instead of granting access based on email domain (i.e. @company.com). If your company offers different email aliases for a single user, you can easily include those in the parameters as well.

With SSO, employees have a more seamless, secure video experience.

4. Connect Your Intranet with a Single Solution for Video Content.

In an age of remote work, internal communications often end up on the company intranet. If teams are already used to checking the intranet for the latest updates, your video portal should be accessible and visible there.

The key to secure video is making sure there’s a single solution to store internal media content that ensures only the right viewers get access to the right content. With an integration via SSO, employees can easily access a video portal from the intranet and discover the latest internal communications videos there.

Integration via SSO enables the enterprise to control viewer roles and permissions by IT. If the video solution has API access, admin users can keep user permissions, video content, secure access, and identity verification completely secure. Likewise, internal comms teams can have the data rights management (DRM) that they need to make sure all the video content is viewed by the right teams.

Understanding the Methodology for Securing Video

Video is one of the most important ways to connect with teams today. It’s also one of the most common forms of content to be controlled by many different teams and distributed across many different channels.

The first step for a better secure video strategy for internal comms teams is simple: find one video solution that can centralize all your content and be as customizable as your company needs.

By building a single source of truth for all internal communications videos, you can make it easier for employees to discover what they need and how to watch it. Onboarding, announcements, town halls, executive updates, and other important videos all easily fit into an employee’s day-to-day process.