Safeguarding Film & TV Content - Top Tips from Sohonet's VP of Technology

With Sohonet being the trusted supplier for networking, security, and remote collaboration tools for every major film studio, Sohonet's VP of Technology, Patrick Sumby, shares exclusive top tips to ensure your media stays secure in an ever-evolving digital landscape.

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1. Why is firewall protection key for companies operating in our industry?

Security of the content we’re working with is paramount to our industry. If something is leaked ahead of a release date the storytelling of the content could be compromised, people that may have paid to view the asset wouldn’t and others may have reduced enjoyment of the content because spoilers mean they already know what's going to happen. Ultimately this results in reduced revenue for the Movie or TV show.

2. What is a UTM, and why is it important in our industry?‍

UTM (Unified Threat Management) aka NextGen firewalling is the ability to drill down deeper into the traffic entering / leaving your network. Rather than just filtering traffic based on IP addresses and ports, you can identify the applications in use, build more complex rules based on user or time of day and take feeds from the firewall vendor and dynamically react and respond to threats.

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3. When would you suggest outsourcing firewall management to an external entity?

Obviously this isn’t a one size fits all solution so outsourcing isn’t always the right approach, however there are a number of benefits of outsourcing firewall management. Most companies have a lot of different technologies they work with and having someone on staff who is trained and qualified to manage firewalls isn’t always possible. That person is likely pulled in lots of different directions and isn’t making changes on a regular basis or if they are, they might need to spend a lot of time working out how to do a certain thing. With a managed solution you have the benefit of 24x7 access to a team who manages hundreds of firewalls and are making dozens of changes every day. That team comes with the expertise of knowing how to carry out the required changes quickly and efficiently. Additionally that service comes with a fully monitored device with backups, software updates and full vendor support.

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4. Considering the current trend of remote work, what additional security measures should our industry prioritise, beyond firewall management?

Since 2020 the distributed nature of the workforce has dramatically changed what is referred to as the “attack surface” of an organisation. IT and infosec teams are no longer trying to protect users inside the closed walls of an office with enterprise level security. The attack surface is now the employee’s entire home, the fact that their neighbours know their WiFi password and the children's laptop with potentially many unknown viruses on it. I wrote a blog back in 2020 all about this and the majority of it still stands:www.sohonet.com/article/securing-the-home-essential-strategies-for-media-teams-in-todays-work-environment
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5. What are the top 5 Security best practices you think are essential for setting up a secure network infrastructure in our industry?

There are so many different things that you should do to protect your business and so many lists like these, however my top 5 would probably be the following:

• Have a digital asset register some text
  • If you know what you’re trying to protect, that's half the battle, its usually the old server that everyone forgot about that gets compromised.
• Ensure you have all relevant patches and up to date software on all your devices some text
  • Don’t skimp on vendor support contracts
  • Cycle out older hardware as it nears its end of support
  • Patch quickly and regularly so you get it it before the bad guys do
  • Good regular education of users through Security Awareness Training

• Users are much less likely to click on some malware if they know to look out for it
• Good practices around access management
  • Unique accounts for each user
  • Strong Passwords
  • Enforcing MFA
  • Employ Least Privilege to ensure that people only have access to the things they need

• Ensure you have sufficient logging and monitoring of your infrastructure enables you to identify and track a breach if it were to occur

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Obviously there are more in depth lists and frameworks than this to check yourself against like the NIST top 10, CIS top 18, MPA best practices and the Movie Labs CSAP.

Explore further services from Sohonet such as ClearView Rush, our dailies editing software or FileRunner, our file transfer software among others. Get in touch with one of our production experts today.