CDSA

NAB Show: Taksati’s Taylor Stresses Security Measures at Cyber Summit

LAS VEGAS — At one point during his presentation April 8 at the Cyber Security & Content Protection Summit at the NAB Show, Chris Taylor, founder and principle consultant of Taksati Consulting, shared a slide with an overwhelming overlap of logos of companies that suffered data breaches in 2017.

“I had to cut it down,” he laughed afterwards, speaking with the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA). “I could have been up there for an hour.” After all, he estimates there are approximately 80 data breaches a day. Mentioning them all would be impossible.

His presentation — “How to Avoid Making Cybersecurity News in 2018” — looked at some of the biggest data breaches of the year, and offered insight into not only how to protect against cyberattacks, but also how to react when one happens to your company.

“You’re data is what’s getting stolen,” Taylor stressed during his presentation. He pointed to the hack against competitive gaming group E-Sports Entertainment Association (ESEA), which saw approximately 1.5 million users’ information compromised. What ESEA did next was huge for the company, Taylor said: not only did the company not pay the ransom demanded by the hackers, they went to law enforcement right away and also quickly and clearly notified users about the attack and what information was stolen.

That’s the opposite of what Equifax did with their data breach of nearly 148 million users, Taylor said. That company was not upfront about the extent of the damage right away, continued to revise upward the number of people affected, and created a massive PR headache for itself. And then there was the nightmare Uber made for itself, paying a ransom to hackers who stole information around an estimated 57 million driver and rider accounts, and not telling law enforcement.

“You’re opening yourself up to all sorts of financial and legal risks,” Taylor said of that approach to a data breach.

To help protect against data breaches, Taylor offered some seemingly simple solutions: don’t share sensitive information in the cloud assessable to the public, apply patches and updates to your software, immediately, and limit administrative access to your most sensitive assets.

The half-day, inaugural Cyber Security & Content Protection Summit provided technology and business updates on cybersecurity and anti-piracy initiatives in both film and television. It was produced by the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA) and the Content Delivery & Security Association (CDSA), in cooperation with the NAB.

Microsoft Azure, Dolby, NAGRA, the Digital Watermarking Alliance and Convergent Risk sponsored the event.