Architectural principles for secure streaming & secure adaptation in the developing scalable video coding (SVC) standard

Scalable video coding has long been known to provide important functionalities such as low-complexity adaptation for diverse clients with different resources and for delivery over heterogeneous networks with time-varying available bandwidths. Recent advancements in scalable video coding have significantly improved the achievable compression performance, and the Scalable Video Coding (SVC) standard is currently under intense development. An additional capability of scalable coding, which we believe has received less attention than it deserves, is the possibility with careful cross-layer design to support secure adaptive streaming at an untrustworthy sender and secure adaptation at an untrustworthy mid-network node. Building on the Secure Scalable Streaming framework for video, and its realization within the JPEG-2000 Security (JPSEC) standard, we describe the architectural principles and design details necessary so that SVC can also enable secure adaptive streaming at a sender and secure R-D optimized adaptation at an untrustworthy mid-network node.