If you use video for your business, most of the time you’ll want to make your videos more visible. After all, the more people who watch your videos, the more opportunities to connect with potential customers and expand awareness of your brand.

However, there will be times when you want to prevent some (or all) people from seeing your videos. Adding a password is one way to secure your videos and control who can see your content.

And the answer is YES.  You can password protect Youtube videos.  There’s just one caveat, and we’ll explain that below. 

Also in this article we’ll show you how you can test doing that yourself. 

However, there are also other security issues you should be aware of which we cover in this article.  Please read those carefully.

Password protecting your videos isn’t as straightforward as you might expect — especially if you’re using YouTube or other popular video sharing platforms. And, as just mentioned, it’s not the only consideration in securing your videos.

To help you and others struggling to make sense of video security, we compiled a list of the most commonly asked questions from Google, Twitter, Quora, and our own experience and answered them here for you. Read along, bookmark it for later, or jump to a specific question using the links below:

What is video piracy?

Video piracy refers to the practice of downloading or sharing videos without the creator’s consent. Pirates have many different ways of doing this, ranging from seemingly innocent to sophisticated and malicious.

For example, someone might share their password for a video training course with someone else. Or, they might use a browser extension or plugin to illegally download a paid video for free.

In both scenarios, piracy can hurt your business’ revenue and compromise sensitive information.

If you use YouTube for your videos, are you susceptible to piracy?

The short answer is yes.  And it’s just one of many reasons you should just not use Youtube in general on your website.

While YouTube does offer some copyright protections, it does nothing to prevent someone from stealing a video from your channel and uploading it to their own site or another channel.

As we mentioned above, there are a number of popular plugins and browser extensions that allow someone to download a copy of your video from YouTube (and other streaming sites) without your permission.

What is video security, and why is it important?

Video security refers to all of the measures taken to protect your videos from unauthorized use or sharing. Adding a password is one well-known way to secure your videos, but it’s not the only way.

Think about home security: While locking your doors is an important first step, sometimes you might want additional protections like motion lights, security cameras, and alarms.

Likewise, video security often consists of many layers of protection including password protection, encryption, and domain whitelisting — which we’ll explore in more detail below.

Video security is important for both your personal content and for your business. Unless it’s properly secured, any video you upload is susceptible to piracy, theft, or loss. Securing your videos prevents someone from viewing or downloading them without your permission. And, it ensures that your private or proprietary information stays safe.

What types of video should I secure?

As a rule of thumb, any video that contains private or sensitive information should be secured. The same goes for any premium content. You’ve likely spent a lot of time creating this content, so you’ll want to make sure it’s only accessible to people who have paid to watch it.

Also keep in mind your school or company security policy might dictate what kinds of video content need to be protected with a password or other measures.

Some specific types of video you’ll want to consider protecting include:

– eLearning courses
– Premium/membership-only content
– Training employees online
– Internal meetings
– Sensitive company communications
– One-to-one videos, such as personalized product demos or coaching sessions
– Client videos
– Drafts or rough cuts of marketing videos

How can I share my videos securely?

If you need to share videos with clients and colleagues, you want to be able to do it quickly, easily, and securely. Thankfully, a video hosting platform like Spotlightr enables you to do exactly that.

Security is a big convern for our customers so we take this issue seriously.  And because our hosting is private by default, there is no special setting you need to use to ensure your videos aren’t available for others to browse (like Vimeo or Youtube).

Nobody can see your videos unless you personally publish your own content.

There are a variety of other security features like password gates, video encryption, access codes, and domain whitelisting which all add layers of security to your video content.  With your videos uploaded ,sharing them securely is as easy as sending a link.

What is the best way to password protect a video?

The best and most straightforward option is to not use Youtube at all and use a video player that comes with a built-in password protection feature. Spotlightr offers one with its video hosting and marketing platform.

All you need to do is upload your video and turn on the password protect gate feature. You can choose your password, adjust when the lock appears, and even customize the style of your lock. The password protection only affects the video itself — not the page where it’s embedded — which allows you to add a password protected video to an otherwise public page.

But we understand that many people want to build their Youtube channel.  We have one as well.

There is a solution for your Youtube videos.

Can you password protect YouTube videos?

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first: You can’t password protect a video inside of YouTube. 

You can change the visibility to private, and invite only certain people to view the video.  Or, you can make the video unlisted so it won’t show up in your channel or in search results.  Those are your only security features with Youtube.

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, it’s possible to password protect your Youtube videos.  You just need to use Spotlightr to do it.

All you need to do is copy the link of your Youtube video and paste it into Spotlightr. From there, you can enable the password gate feature.   With our “hybrid hosting” feature, the video will still be hosted on YouTube, but will play in Spotlightr’s player. In this way, you can add a password to any video that’s already on YouTube.

It’s worth noting here that YouTube is a public video platform. As such, it’s not necessarily the best option for hosting private videos like training materials and meeting recordings.

If you plan to use videos for your business, you’re better off uploading them to a platform that’s specifically designed for that purpose. A private video platform will give you more control over the look and feel of your videos and keep your videos on-brand.  This will ultimately strengthen your brand overall.

When are password protected videos useful?

As we mentioned above, password protecting your videos allows you to control exactly who can view your content. Anyone with the link will need to type in the password in order to watch your video.

This is useful when you want to share a video of your product development meeting with your internal team. Or, when you want to house premium video content or resources, such as paid training videos for your clients. Adding a password will help ensure that only the people you want to see your videos can see them.

Check out this example here.  The password is:  adventure

How can I prevent people from stealing my videos, downloading or sharing my content without my permission?

If you want to protect your videos, the best thing to do is to upload your videos to a hosting platform like Spotlightr that includes the option for HLS encryption.

Once encryption is turned on, it’s virtually impossible for someone to download your content using popular plugins and extensions. And, should they somehow succeed in downloading a file, the file will not play.

What’s the difference between password protection and encryption?

Adding a password prevents people from viewing your videos without permission. You can think of it like putting your videos in a locked room. Only someone who has the key can get in.

Encryption, on the other hand, prevents people from taking your videos — even if they have the password. So, people will be able to watch your video, but they won’t be able to download a workable file.

Password protection and encryption are powerful alone, but they’re even better together.

For example, let’s say you’ve created an eLearning video course. Students who have paid to take the course can login with the password you provide and view the videos. However, if you’ve turned on encryption, they won’t be able to save a copy of the content to their own device. In this way, password protection and encryption keep your video content secure.

What is domain whitelisting, and how does it work?

Domain whitelisting is a method of ensuring that only approved websites (‘domains’) are using your video content. It’s another way of securing your videos from unauthorized use.

Before we talk about whitelisting, it’s important to understand videos are added to web pages. 

When you add a video to a page, you need what is called “embed code”.  This is just a small piece of HTML code that you add to your web page that “embeds” the video into the page.  Each video you add to your site has a unique embed code which allows you to display the video on your website.

The problem, though, is that anyone with basic knowledge of website code can also grab your embed code from your site and add it to their own blog or website. That’s where domain whitelisting comes in.

Domain whitelisting for your videos allows you to choose which domains are allowed to play the video. The embed code will only work on the whitelisted domains. 

The end result?

Even if someone succeeds in stealing your embed code and adding it to their own domain, the video won’t play.

How do I keep my video from appearing in search results?

Sometimes you might want to keep your video out of search engine results. If you’re a coach or content creator, you don’t want your premium content to show up in YouTube search results, for example.

If you want to prevent your video from showing up in search results, the best way is to upload it to a private video hosting platform. This gives you total control over where (and how) your videos appear.

Secure Your Videos Right Now

Now that you know the basics of video security, you might want to try some of these features out for yourself.

Create a free Spotlightr trial account and start using our security features today.