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Media and Communications Cybersecurity is more critical than ever. In the past decade, media and communications companies have embraced digital technologies that help them not only create and deliver their products in new and compelling ways but also collect, store and use a massive amount of data to gain deeper insights into their customers. In fact, the digital revolution has fundamentally changed virtually every aspect of media and communications companies’ business and technology.
Closed networks are giving way to multi-service and multi-protocol delivery over IP to consumer-owned devices. Broadcast is increasingly superseded by direct delivery of personalised content based on extensive analytics of viewer data. Business success overall is more dependent than ever on forging personal, one-to-one relationships with customers.
But it also opens up significant new risks that could lead companies’ content, data, and business systems to be compromised. And those risks, if not mitigated, represent a true existential threat.
Personal Data and The Digital Economy
The data explosion accompanying the digital economy, in itself, has created a new and valuable asset. In particular, newly collected personal data is vital to crafting and delivering the personalised experiences consumers clamour for—and, in many cases, are willing to pay more to get. However, that data is also irresistible to cybercriminals. Personal data is a commonly traded commodity on the Dark Web, which makes stealing it compelling to hackers. The consequence often of such a theft is not only lost data but inadvertently destroying the company’s content as well as other related intellectual property.
Another area not to be forgotten is the raft of compliance and regulations now facing any organisation when personal data is being stored. The latest regulation, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), can impose large fines not only on the data owner but also any third party processor of the data (i.e. marketing companies). This then leads to personal litigation against the senior executives as should the company be found to be negligent the individuals whose data was compromised can take legal steps against the executives.
Media and Communication companies need to protect their data wherever it resides and control who or what has access to it. This is important as data should only be touched by those who have a need to use it. This means restricting what can be done with the data very important. For example, a system administrator will need to look after the servers where data, such as contracts, reside but they do not need to read the actual content of the contract.
Other users who have no rights to servers or data will not even see the contract. These controls are achieved by linking access control with encryption, where a user can be granted full viewability whereas another user is effectively blinded and sees nothing. Furthermore, monitoring of user or application access is key in detecting a breach, investigating it and ensuring it does not happen again. This is where data analytics and Advanced Threat Detection are a valuable tool in your cyber armoury.
How We Can Help With Media and Communications Cybersecurity
At Digital Pathways we have a range of solutions that can provide you with controls to data without breaking any of your organisation’s processes or introducing complex technical procedures that may hamper your service delivery.
If you are looking for a solution provider to give you sound advice call us to see how we may help.
