News

Hollywood IT execs today are undergoing the biggest ‘close-ups’ of their careers with a string of high-profile events keeping security top of every studio IT departments’ ‘priority list. New technologies are creating new vulnerabilities that require new defenses.

Cybersecurity preparedness will be the subject of three sessions at next week’s Hollywood IT Summit (HITS), Thursday, May 14 in Century City.

Stan Stahl, President, Information Systems Security Association, L.A. Chapter (ISSA-LA), will be moderating a panel of security experts on how technology, people and processes can prevent the loss of revenue, disclosure of information, embarrassment of company personnel, tarnishing of the brand and even blackmail.

The panel will include: Sean Flynn, Chief Technology Officer, Marvel Studios; Jonathan Chow, Chief Security Officer, Live Nation Entertainment; Sean Cordero, Chair, Controls Matrix Working Group, Cloud Security Alliance (CSA); and Bryan Ellenburg, Security Consultant, Production & Post Production Editorial, Content Delivery & Security Association (CDSA)

Protecting the privacy of studio customers is another critical issue as the industry gears up to collect advanced market data and analytics. In many cases, the most critical consideration for business and governments alike is not what can we do, but what should we do based on these core values.

Jonathan H. King, Strategist, Investor & Author on Technology and Intellectual Property Law, looks at the ethical best practices in the wake of recent privacy missteps that have caused public outcry, as well as the legal and regulatory frameworks that are beginning to take shape around big data.

Storage has become another major consideration for studio IT departments as the industry migrates to 4K and 8K formats. Erik Weaver, Project Manager, Production in the Cloud, Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California (ETC@USC) will lead a panel on the challenges of storing and securing today’s huge data files, both internally and in the cloud, and on the new security standards developed by the MPAA, CSA, CDSA and ISO27001.

Also on the panel will be Sean Cordero, Chair, Controls Matrix Working Group, Cloud Security Alliance (CSA); Chris Johnson, Territory Co-ordinator EMEA & Americas, Content Delivery & Security Association (CDSA); and Matthew O’Connor, Product Manager, Google Cloud Platform Team.