IBC: DPP, NABA Make Cyber Security Recommendations

Complete Coverage: IBC 2016

At IBC, the Digital Production Partnership (DPP) and the North American Broadcasters Association (NABA) jointly released a paper that tackles the cyber security challenges broadcasters are facing, with a host of recommendations on how to tackle today’s threats.

Geared toward both manufacturers and suppliers, the recommendations — which will be adopted by several major U.K. broadcasters — cover documentation and testing, security controls and authentication for products integrated into broadcaster facilities.

“Protecting the viewer’s experience, and the veracity of our output is the number one concern today,” Helen Stevens, DPP chair and director of broadcast operations at ITV, said in a statement. “The growth in connected services and IP- driven production, as well as cloud platforms and applications, means that, as a modern broadcaster, our focus has to be on protecting our content from increasingly frequent cyber attacks.”

NABA’s cyber security group and DPP’s cyber security team (with representatives from BBC, Channel 4, BT Sport, Ericsson, Sky, Five and UKTV) developed the recommendations.

“Cyber security is now one of the top strategic priorities for North American broadcasters,” Michael McEwen, director general at NABA, said in a statement. “We will never protect ourselves fully from attacks, but we need to mitigate their impact. As we define our Information Security requirements for the future, we expect suppliers to be our partners. In fact we need their ideas and expertise in finding solutions that work.”