Looking back at the belated obsession with cyber security that has consumed the industry over the past five days, EBU director of technology Simon Fell said: “It is a changing world, and the work that people have done on OTT and other new areas has suddenly exposed companies to cyber dangers.
“Most good IT departments within broadcasters are aware of the constant threats and have been dealing with them for years. But no-one talks about it,” he added. “The connectivity from an IP studio makes it even more of a risk, because we are not in the world of being isolated with our cables anymore. Suddenly, our media is mixed up with our email, so everything is kind of on the same IP network.
“Our online delivery is on that same network. It is much harder to figure out what is exposed to what, so you have to have good security policies and architecture inside your studio plan, to make sure things are isolated where they should be,” said Fell.
“There are companies that have loads of servers sitting there ready for you to buy for an attack. No single antivirus software product is going to solve this. It requires an arsenal of tools, and an arsenal of people who know how to manage this invasion,” he added. “It takes 90 to 100 days before people realise something bad happened.”
