Global M+E Day: Convergent Risks Aims to Simplify Assessments
Mathew Gilliat-Smith, EVP for Convergent Risks, notices it all the time now: no what the media and entertainment conference is about nowadays, there’s always people talking about security.
“The reason for that is because the risk landscape is getting more scary all the time,” he said 8 June at the Global Media & Entertainment Day, held at the Royal Garden Hotel in London and via the MESAverse virtual platform. “The malware, the leaks … there are threats [everywhere], and the pandemic hasn’t helped, with people taking shortcuts to work.”
Whether you’re a SaaS provider, a localization firm, or a storage specialist, you’re undergoing some sort of security assessment by your content company clients. In order to work with a studio, you need to be security-approved … and that can lead to assessment fatigue, Gilliat-Smith said.
Vendors in the M&E supply chain often undergo multiple security assessments from multiple content owners, and with the increase in cloud and application workflows there are even more controls to cover.
Convergent is aiming to help vendors simplify this process.
“You end up spending most of your life filling out questionnaires,” Gilliat-Smith said. “If you add up all these controls together, you could have something like 15,000 best practices to go through.” And while each studio has good reasons to put companies through individual assessments, the process could be improved.
“What were siloed activities prior to the pandemic converged,” said Chris Johnson, CEO of Convergent Risks. For vendors to make it easier on themselves through the assessment process, they must embed cybersecurity into their core business, develop expertise in the field, and develop a cybersecurity culture.
“We need to make compliance truly relative to the real risks you face,” Johnson said.
Click here for the full Convergent Risks presentation.
The Global Media & Entertainment Day was produced by MESA, in association with the Hollywood IT Society (HITS) and the Smart Content Council and was presented by Box with sponsorship by Signiant, Convergent Risks, Whip Media, and Xcapism Learning.