CDSA

UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. — Media and entertainment organizations are spending millions of dollars to clean up breaches, so it’s become absolutely essential for firms to make investments to make sure they’re prepared to handle such incidents, according to Michael Wylie, director of cybersecurity services for Richey May Technology Solutions.

Reports show that media and entertainment organizations are increasingly being targeted by hackers, just behind the government sector, so “we need to continue to do things to protect” intellectual property, he said Dec. 4 during the panel presentation “Breaches Are Everywhere: Costly Mistakes of Being Unprepared” at the Content Protection Summit.

After all, it seems like every week there’s another company that gets hit by crippling ransomware or a phishing attack or faces a leak of customers’ personal information. So, it’s important to ask: Could these organizations have been better prepared? Would the damages have been so devastating if they were well equipped?

During the panel discussion, Wylie and other industry experts shared strategies to combat the rise of cybercrime and how to be better prepared for the next cyberattack.

They pointed out that organizations need to ask if they’ve built a sustainable cybersecurity program and whether they have a dynamic Information security plan, executive buy-in, Continuous Security Monitoring (CSM) and Network Security Monitoring (NSM) programs. It’s also important to make sure that you’ve tested your Disaster Recovery Plan or Incident Response Plan, they noted. And it’s even tougher for smaller companies to deal with breaches and they could even end up paying the ultimate price by losing their businesses if they get breached.

If an earthquake happened now, how would you be prepared? Wylie asked the audience. Similarly, “I think there’s a lot of organizations that don’t think through it all the time, or they’re thinking they are but they’re not really prepared” for the situation once it happens, he noted. Thinking about what you would do if breached “beforehand can really help organizations deal with these incidents and be better prepared,” he said.

It might also be helpful for organizations to “have some type of common resource or help desk to answer” questions that people have on the subject, he told attendees.

“The industry already has the basic infrastructure to do kind of a help desk type model,” according to Chris Covino, cybersecurity policy director for the city of Los Angeles. An easy-to-use help desk-type system also wouldn’t take a large investment and would be a “smart idea,” he said.

Richard Greenberg, former chief information security officer for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health & Health Services, also spoke during the session.

The Content Protection Summit was produced by MESA and CDSA, and was presented by SHIFT, with sponsorship by IBM Security, NAGRA, Convergent Risks, LiveTiles, Richey May Technology Solutions, EIDR, the Trusted Partner Network (TPN) and Darktrace.

Click here to download audio of the presentation. Click here to download the presentation slide deck.