CAS Adoption Catches Up

Cardless Conditional Access Systems (CAS) leverage a combination of hardware security protections built into the System on Chip (SoC) video processor, software mechanisms that protect secrets, and software/hardware that detects and responds to tampering attempts. “Cisco (NDS) has shipped the most units of cardless security to Cablevision based on its K-LAD system,” notes Sam Rosen, practice director at ABI Research. “However, Nagra and Irdeto are leading this wave of shipments in low ARPU regions, while Verimatrix’s cardless technology is robust and gaining market attention.” Rosen adds cardless CAS has been used for a number of years in two-way IPTV systems, in which the set-top box can exchange information continuously with the CAS server. He concludes, “We are entering a wave of cardless CAS delivered over one-way cable or satellite networks, which cannot rely on exchange of information from the set-top box to the CAS server, except perhaps during device installation.”