Using symmetric key algorithms to secure online video streaming

Symmetric keys can provide confidentiality but they cannot perform authentication, because there is no way to prove through cryptography who had actually sent a message if two people are using the same key. The following are the advantage and disadvantage of using symmetric key systems to secure the online video streaming: 

Advantages

• It is much faster than asymmetric key systems.
• Its security is dependent on the length of the key. With a large key size, the algorithm will be harder to break, because symmetric algorithms carry out relatively simplistic mathematical functions on the bits during the encryption and decryption processes.
• It does not require much computing power.

Disadvantages

• It requires a secure mechanism to deliver the keys.
• Each pair of users needs a unique key; if a user has N people to contact, then N secret keys must be maintained so that as the number of individuals increases, so does the number of keys.
• Management of the symmetric keys can be problematic.
•  Provides confidentiality but cannot authenticate, because the secret key is shared.