ALEXANDRIA, VA.—When our world was a little younger and a lot more innocent, a broadcast operation had little to worry about in terms of security. Perhaps the only safeguard was a hired guard brought in during evening hours to ensure only personnel and expected guests came and went (and no equipment walked out).

That was then; this is now.

Thanks to our highly connected world, it now takes a lot more than a Pinkerton guard to protect broadcast operations. This has given rise to a whole new enterprise—cybersecurity, a term that surfaces almost daily, along with reports of email hackings, data breaches, credit card skimmers—even electronic intrusion at the Pentagon.

RISK TOLERANCE

With almost every piece of gear having an Ethernet port, one might think broadcasters would be especially vigilant. However, this is not always the case.

“Some broadcasters are; some aren’t,” says Kelly Williams, senior director of engineering and technology policy for NAB. “Human behavior is still an issue,” noting that this boils down to risk tolerance—just how serious the threat is perceived to be by businesses and individuals running them.”

While networks and larger station groups have implemented “special ops” groups for safeguarding technical infrastructures, cybersecurity for others is merely installation of antivirus software and implementation of “off-the-shelf” firewalls.

“The banking business has been all over this for a long time and the government has also been very concerned about cybersecurity,” said Williams. “However, some companies haven’t given it much thought at all,” adding that the problem is greater now than ever.

“We’re much more reliant on products that are essentially computer-based,” he continued. “Encoders, playout servers—these are really just computers running Linux or Windows, with software that makes them do what they need to do. Also, the control for devices now is all IP, with access to machines often through a web-based GUI, as not all have keyboards and monitors. Control is via an IP network. Your broadcast plant is really an IP network and is susceptible to ‘shenanigans’ on someone’s part, be it an employee, an outsider, or even a nation state. Operations are much more vulnerable to some sort of a cyber mishap than a few years ago,”

(As an example. Williams related an incident in which France’s Canal Plus was electronically hijacked, with programming on its 11 channels ceasing and normal content on its website replaced by messages presumably supporting the Islamic State. The cyberattack was so devastating it took hours to restart even basic operations, and weeks passed before everything was fully normalized. The attack cost the broadcaster nearly $11 million, not including lost advertising revenue.)

A LONG WAY SINCE ‘CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT’

Wayne Pecena, director of engineering at KAMU public radio and television, and the Texas A&M University System’s wide area data and distance learning network, and a frequent lecturer on cybersecurity at broadcast engineering conferences, echoed Williams’s remarks.

“Cybersecurity in any organization often takes less priority because it is not the core business,” he said. “It is certainly not the core business of a broadcast entity.”

And he agreed that the threat is worse than ever, recalling that two 1980s “hacking” incidents (the “Captain Midnight” and “Max Headroom” transmission disruptions) required specialized hardware (a satellite uplink and microwave transmitter). It’s much different now.

“Today, havoc can be implemented with a notebook computer from a Starbucks,” Pecena said/

So, is there anything broadcasters can do, other than bringing in specialized cybersecurity companies?

“It’s all about ‘cyber hygiene,’” said Williams, explaining that much of this is just common sense.

He suggests immediately changing any manufacturer-supplied passwords when installing new equipment, and implementing policies forbidding such things as connection of employee devices to station networks, as something as innocent as the insertion of a “foreign” thumbdrive into a computer USB port can place malware on a network.

“You need to make the entire staff aware of cybersecurity,” he said.

Williams added another very important (but often overlooked) “cyber hygiene” practice to the list.

“When an employee leaves, immediately kill off all of their passwords,” noting that neglecting this places a station’s infrastructure at high risk, especially in the case of terminated staffers.

He added that firewall implementation is not something that can be done once and forgotten about.

Pecena added his own suggestions for safeguarding broadcast infrastructures, which include:

· Use a “best practice” approach to network architecture design.

· Segment the network into functional domains—keep broadcast content and control networks separate.

· Allow access on a “need-to-access” basis.

· Use a proxy device to transfer external files with enterprise grade antivirus.

“A firewall takes regular care and feeding to be an effective cybersecurity measure,” Pecena said. “‘Care’ [in analyzing] the log files to see what is being filtered [denied or permitted] and ‘feeding’ to maintain security signature updates.”

Whether it’s a major television network or LPTV, all broadcast operations are vulnerable to cyberattacks. It behooves players to learn as much about cybersecurity as possible and to practice it on a daily basis.

Gary Arlen is president of Arlen Communications LLC, a research and consulting firm. He can be reached atinfo@arlencommunications.com.

Need to Know More?
Do you have a burning question about cybersecurity? Or maybe there's a particular topic you'd like to see us tackle in future installments of Need to Know. Email us at needtoknow@futurenet.com and we’ll put our top minds on it!

To learn more about cybersecurity's influence on other technology channels, check out these articles from Future sister titles:

· Cybersecurity and Residential Integration [Residential Systems]

· Cybersecurity and AV [AV Network]

· Cybersecurity and Pro Audio [Pro Sound Network]

· Cybersecurity and Radio [Radio World]

· Cybersecurity and TV [Multichannel News]

Editor’s Note: Welcome to Future’s third edition of Need to Know, a series exploring complex topics like blockchain, 5G and artificial intelligence — and how they apply to each industry served by our websites and magazines.

“We keep building new things on old infrastructure that never seems to get fixed.”

Chris Wysopal is a hacker who was quoted in a Washington Post column about the state of internet security (or perhaps we should call it insecurity). In May Wysopal — also known by his hacker name Weld Pond — joined several others in a return visit to Capitol Hill, where 20 years earlier they’d testified in a congressional hearing about the insecurities of software and networks.

Their 1998 appearance helped put the issue of cybersecurity on the national stage. A central part of their 2018 message is that digital security isn’t much better today.

COSTLY AND DANGEROUS

Malicious cyber activity cost the U.S. economy between $57 billion and $109 billion in 2016, according to the White House Council of Economic Advisors. Cyber threats are ever-evolving, and the sophistication of adversaries keeps growing. But, according to the White House report, the private sector may, for any number of reasons, be tempted to underinvest in cybersecurity.

National security officials echo the concern.

“Our daily life, economic vitality and national security depend on a stable, safe and resilient cyberspace,” says the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in explaining why it devotes a large web resource to the topic.

The department this spring released a strategy hoping to help reduce vulnerabilities, build resilience, counter malicious actors and make the ecosystem more secure. It identifies 16 “critical infrastructure” sectors where a loss of networks would have a debilitating effect on the country. But even trying to define the sectors demonstrates how broadly the subject touches every corner of American life; they range from commercial facilities and manufacturing to the communications sector and health care.

Homeland Security took particular note of a growing concern about the threat of “wide-scale or high-consequence events” that could cause harm or disrupt services on which the economy and millions of people depend. “Sophisticated cyber actors and nation-states exploit vulnerabilities to steal information and money and are developing capabilities to disrupt, destroy or threaten the delivery of essential services.”

How might your own business be whacked? A threat can come via denial of service attacks; destruction of data and property; disruption of business, perhaps for ransom; and the theft of your proprietary data, intellectual property and financial and strategic information. Reports of data breaches and cyber attacks are everyday news. Lewis Morgan on the IT Governance Blog curated more than 60 such stories in the month of May and counted the total of breached records that month at more than 17 million — “actually quite low when compared with previous months.”

In 2018, virtually every major and minor business or organization relies on the global, interdependent IT ecosystem. The degree to which leaders take the subject seriously could, in the long term, determine the survival of those enterprises.

To learn what trends businesses should be watching, we turned to several sources approaching the topic from various angles.

THREATS IN BURSTS

In its 2018 Annual Cybersecurity Report, Cisco said malware is definitely becoming more vicious and harder to combat. “We now face everything from network-based ransomware worms to devastating wiper malware,” the company stated. “At the same time, adversaries are getting more adept at creating malware that can evade traditional sandboxing.”

While encryption can enhance security and is used by roughly half of global web traffic, Cisco continued, encryption provides bad actors with a powerful tool to hide command-and-control activity. “Those actors then have more time to inflict damage.”

Artificial intelligence may help. “Encryption also reduces visibility. More enterprises are therefore turning to machine learning and artificial intelligence. With these capabilities, they can spot unusual patterns in large volumes of encrypted web traffic. Security teams can then investigate further.”

Cisco made note of several other trends and findings:

• Short, pernicious “burst attacks” are growing in complexity, frequency and duration. “In one study, 42% of the organizations experienced this type of DDoS [distributed denial of service] attack in 2017. In most cases, the recurring bursts lasted only a few minutes.”
• Many new domains are tied to spam campaigns. “Most of the malicious domains we analyzed, about 60%, were associated with spam campaigns,” Cisco reported.
• Security is seen as a key benefit of hosting networks in the cloud. “The use of on-premises and public cloud infrastructure is growing. Security is the most common benefit of hosting networks in the cloud, the security personnel respondents say.”
• One bad insider can be a big threat, and a few rogue users can have a huge impact. “Just 0.5% of users were flagged for suspicious downloads. On average, those suspicious users were each responsible for 5,200 document downloads.”
• It’s not just your IT assets that are at risk. Expect more attacks on operational technology as well as the internet of things. “Thirty-one percent of security professionals said their organizations have already experienced cyber attacks on OT infrastructure.”
• The multivendor environment affects risk. “Nearly half of the security risk that organizations face stems from having multiple security vendors and products.”

IOT RANSOMWARE

Another observer taking stock is Aidan Simister, the global SVP for Lepide Software. Writing in a post on the CSO website, he too predicts artificial intelligence will take a bigger role. But while AI may help the good guys, he notes, hackers too can use it to launch more sophisticated cyber-attacks. Further, new strains of malware can work around “sandbox” defensive techniques, waiting until they are outside the sandbox before executing their malicious code.

Meanwhile, Simister agrees that the “internet of things” could become more of a target for ransomware, with hackers targeting power grids, factory lines, smart cars or home appliances to demand payment. Many businesses, Simister predicted, will not comply with the European Union’s new General Data Protection Regulation on data protection and privacy (the thing you’ve been getting all those emails about). He predicts some companies will choose to ignore it, accepting the risk.

We’re also likely to see a growing number of companies adopt multi-factor authentication in response to data breaches involving weak, stolen or default passwords.

He expects that more sophisticated security strategies may find wider adoption. These may include the use of “remote browsers”; deception technologies that imitate a company’s critical assets; systems to spot and identify suspicious behavior; better network traffic analysis; and “real-time change auditing solutions” that do things like detect abuses of user privileges or suspicious activity in files and folders.

But Simister too sees the risk of more attacks backed by hostile governments; in response he predicts more efforts to train staff and to develop international sharing of information.

PRIVACY PARADOX

One change in mindset visible in the market is a deemphasis on the idea of “perimeter security.” “You are not safe behind the perimeter, because the perimeter itself no longer exists,” Akamai argues on its website. “Today’s world is cloud- and mobile-driven, and the traditional moat-and-castle approach to enterprise security is no longer applicable for modern business practices.”

With applications hosted in various places and a workforce on the move, the company argues, there is no longer a delineation between inside and outside the network. “As a result, seemingly every week there are new reports about high-profile data breaches and cyberattacks.”

Akamai Chief Technology Officer Charlie Gero argues in favor of what he calls zero trust security architecture. “Companies must evolve to a ‘never trust, always verify’ zero trust model to secure against the wide variety of threats that exist and are constantly evolving,” Akamai states.

Looking at the consumer economy more broadly, cybersecurity is only likely to become more crucial thanks to ongoing developments in areas as diverse as cryptocurrency, interactive smart speakers and mobile payments.

For example, a major trend toward platform personalization — whether it be on Facebook or Spotify, Wave or NextDoor — raises the privacy stakes. Venture capitalist Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins notes the massive amount of personalized data that people have put into such platforms.

That data, she said in remarks at the Code 2018 conference, improves engagement and leads to better experiences for consumers — but it also helps creates what she calls a privacy paradox: “Internet companies are making low-price services better in part from user data. Internet users are increasing their time on internet services based on perceived value. Regulators want to ensure data is not used improperly, and not all regulators think about this in the same way.”

Regulatory considerations are thus a big, uncertain element in this picture.

THE WEAK HUMAN LINK

IT expert Wayne Pecena, who works in the broadcast and education sectors, says security should be an ongoing process. Yet that at many business, unfortunately, it tends to be treated as a one-time, set-it-up-and-forget-it event.

Pecena is assistant director information technology of educational broadcast services at Texas A&M University and director of engineering for KAMU Public Radio and Television; he says cybersecurity never has an end.

“It is a continuous process of monitoring, evaluation, analysis and prevention as the threat landscape is always in a state of change and evolution,” he said. “I would also not lose sight of the past, as ransomware, phishing [and] distributed denial of service will likely continue at an accelerated pace. As cloud services and applications continue to expand, I would also keep the cloud cybercrime landscape or Cybersecurity-as-a-Service on my radar.”

In Pecena’s experience, most organizations do spend plenty of time and money in protecting their IT environment, but often the simplest areas can be overlooked while the focus is on higher-tech matters. “Social engineering remains one of the largest threats to an organization, and the human factor remains a weak link. The internet of things movement brings challenges, as most of these types of devices lack any real internal security capability and instead rely on external protection means.”

He also finds “crypto-mining” a fascinating area of concern as computing resources are hijacked for someone’s bitcoin mining applications. “Not necessarily destructive — like DDoS or ransomware — to an organization, [but] host computing resources can be [affected] such that legitimate application use is impacted. Malicious mining scripts can easily be picked up from a casual website visit, and this opens a new area for antivirus protection software.”

Pecena said for him this recalls the days of desktop computers being unknowingly hijacked to serve music or distribute porn. Those well-meaning hackers who returned to Washington recently hoped to draw attention once again to the issue of digital security. At least one pushed for government to play a larger role. But another said companies also need to take advantage of the tools and knowledge that are already available.

It was Robert Mueller — yes, that one — who is credited with saying back in 2012 that there are only two types of companies: those that have been hacked and those that will be hacked. Today that wisdom is often updated to read: “There are two types of companies: Those that know they’ve been hacked, and those that don’t know that they’ve been hacked.”

Manage accordingly.

SOURCES AND MORE READING

Derek Hawkins, The Washington Post, “Hackers: Internet Security Threats From 20 Years Ago Persist”

Department of Homeland Security, “Cybersecurity Strategy”

Adam Simister, “7 Cybersecurity Trends to Watch Out for in 2018”

Cisco “2018 Annual Cybersecurity Report”

Mary Meeker, Kleiner Perkins, “Internet Trends 2018

White House Council of Economic Advisors, “The Cost of Malicious Cyber Activity to the U.S. Economy”

Charlie Gero, Akamai, “Moving Beyond Perimeter Security”

MORE RESOURCES

The race to build out “fiber in the sky” is on.

The next-generation mobile standard known as 5G, the fifth generation of the technology, is poised to create a new platform that is not just faster, but is much more agile than today’s state-of-the-art 4G (also known as Long Term Evolution, or LTE) networks.

Expected to debut wide in the next two years, it’s the latest in the continuum of every innovation in wireless technology, and it promises to disrupt — if not complement — many industries with lightning-fast communication speeds.

5G will roll out as a network of cell sites offering Gigabit-level speeds (rivaling speeds offered via today’s wireline broadband) over the airwaves, with lower latency. (No more hourglass or beach ball icons!)

The technology will also underpin a vast array of fixed (non-mobile) and mobile devices, services and applications across an array of industries, including entertainment, education, music and medicine. Consumers need only a 5G-capable device to connect.

Deployments of 5G are already underway using pre-commercial technology by the usual suspects — the incumbent mobile network operators — but there are a host of new providers, including cable operators, who have become increasingly eager to add mobile and wireless to their service arsenals.

The first anticipated types of 5G-based services will be fixed wireless data offerings that can deliver speeds in the neighborhood of 1 Gigabit per second to the home or business. The implications for the Internet of Things, in a world where every home appliance and gadget is dependent on robust wireless connections, are enormous.

Blazing Fast Internet

For traditional services, imagine downloading a full two-hour movie, or an entire semester of classes to a student, in mere seconds — while also supporting the massive data rates that will be required by new virtual reality and augmented reality services.

Further out, 5G will also be mobile, with sub-millisecond latencies that greatly cut down the time it takes for data to be transferred after it is requested. That will be a major requirement, for instance, for mobile networks that can ensure that self-driving cars stay connected and can navigate the streets safely.

For now, despite its futuristic reputation of sensors everywhere, 5G is saddled with technical hurdles. For example, 5G signals, particularly when delivered in the upper, millimeter-wave frequency bands, will need a clear path, as their performance is vulnerable to obstacles such as trees and buildings.

For the cable industry, 5G is viewed as a threat and an opportunity. While 5G could create a new speedy broadband rival, it will also require the deployment of millions of dense, high-capacity small cells that are in stark contrast to the macro-cell networks used by today’s 4G services. And it so happens that cable’s fiber-rich network is well positioned to provide those critical backhaul and powering requirements. That could be a major moneymaker for the cable guys.

Not-Ready-for-Primetime Player

When will all of the pieces fall into place? Though some 5G-based fixed wireless services will take hold in 2018, the big ramp for the technology isn’t expected to emerge until 2020.

Several mobile service providers, cable operators and startups such as Starry are already well downstream with 5G-based fixed wireless tests and deployments. The mobile aspects of 5G aren’t expected to take hold in a big way until 2020.

In the meantime, initial 5G-based fixed wireless deployments could put some pressure on wireline ISPs.

“The use case [for 5G] I get most excited about is the opportunity to have a nearly nationwide broadband footprint,” Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s chairman, president and CEO, said on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call, expressing confidence that 5G could serve as a fixed-line replacement for both business and residential customers.

“The capacity is there; the performance is there,” he said. “There’s going to be full Gigabit throughput.”

Mobile Making a Move

But that work isn’t stopping progress on mobilized 5G even before there are smartphones and other mobile devices that will support it. AT&T, for example, plans to launch a mobile form of 5G by the end of 2018 in about a dozen markets. However, the initial deployment won’t involve direct integration with laptops, smartphones or tablets, but instead rely on a smaller router-like device that can connect other devices to the 5G network.

“Think of this as a puck,” Stephenson said of the new device. He wants AT&T to push mobile 5G forward before handsets that support the next-generation wireless technology become available.

T-Mobile will be keying its 5G strategy on spectrum in the lower spectrum bands. While that will address the mobile opportunity, “it will also open up this massive set of opportunities on 5G in the Internet of Things space, where you can connect everything that can be connected,” Neville Ray, T-Mobile’s chief technology officer and executive vice president, said on the company’s Q4 2017 earnings call in February.

And the phone company plans to be aggressive. John Legere, T-Mobile’s CEO, said that 5G, when fully deployed, “will be in every spectrum band, and we will be participating in a lot of ways either through acquisition of spectrum, acquisition of companies, mergers and consolidation.”

But T-Mobile’s focus on the wide-area benefits of the 600 MHz band for its 5G rollout underscores a critical factor in that deployment: Not all spectrum is created equal. Millimeter wave signals don’t propagate well over long distances, have difficulty in the presence of trees and buildings and require an almost perfect line of sight.

“They hardly like air,” Robert Howald, Comcast’s vice president of network architecture, said at an industry event last year. He was making a joke, but he also made an important point — it’s unlikely that any 5G strategy will be able to live successfully on millimeter wave spectrum alone.

There is much to be worked out, but 5G is poised to be a game-changer for anything that is connected, streamed or downloaded.

Need to Know More?

Have a burning question about 5G — or maybe request for a different topic you’d like to see us tackle? Email us at needtoknow@nbmedia.com and we’ll put our top minds on it!

BETHESDA, Md.—At a presentation to automotive executives near Detroit in late 2016, Advanced Television Systems Committee officials demonstrated how — in addition to traditional over-the-air broadcasting — ATSC 3.0 could also be used for telematics, infotainment and other services involving connected cars and autonomous vehicles.

The idea of using a broadcast standard for such uses is revolutionary but it’s anticipated that the emerging 5G wireless standard will be the dominant method for communicating with autonomous vehicles. On the other hand, the vastly increased bandwidth of 5G will give wireless carriers the ability to greatly expand their video offerings.

So could these two standards be headed for a “technology smackdown?” Not according to most broadcast executives.

The ever-upbeat Mark Aitken, vice president of advanced technology at Sinclair Broadcast Group, emphasized the ability of the technologies to work together.

“The new [ATSC 3.0] broadcast standard was designed with 5G convergence in mind,” he said at the event, emphasizing the internet protocol foundations of both technologies.

COLLABORATIVE POTENTIAL

In a follow-up discussion with TV Technology, Aitken expanded his thoughts: “5G is about heterogeneous networks and hybrid services,” he said, adding that the emerging technologies will give companies “the ability to align the data framing of 3.0 with LTE [Long-Term Evolution, the current 4G format] and 5G.”

Aitken and others have stressed the collaborative potential as both ATSC 3.0 and 5G technologies race to market on parallel courses in the coming months. Although there is competitive potential l— such as 5G’s broadband capability to deliver on-demand video services and 3.0’s prospect for transmitting voice messages over IP — broadcasters and suppliers are confident that the two technologies will both evolve into the market strongly. They emphasize that 3.0 is optimized for broadcast while 5G is tailored for unicast streaming and fixed wireless access.

“ATSC 3.0 and 5G address different use cases and scenarios,” acknowledged Mauricio Aracena, Media Standardization Manager at Ericsson. “Neither technology will interfere with the other. On the contrary, hybrid capabilities of ATSC — such as support for broadcast and broadband delivery — allows broadcasters to combine both 3.0 and 5G technologies for more personalized content.”

It’s still too early to determine just exactly what 5G will entail, according to Richard Chernock, chief science officer at Triveni Digital.

“We know exactly what 3.0 is, but don’t yet know what 5G is because it’s in the early part of its cycle,” he said. “5G is a collection of technologies that may work with each other.

“It has enormous bandwidth; its low latency [and other attributes] may work well together,” but other features are mutually exclusive, said Chernock, who until recently headed ATSC’s Technology Group 3, which guided the Next Gen TV standard to completion.

Chernock acknowledges that there are many “things you could do” to integrate 5G and 3.0 capabilities.

“There is flexibility in the 3.0 physical layer that you could include 5G,” he explained. He pointed out that the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project, a mobile industry technology standards group) is examining how 5G could move the wireless telecom business from its legacy one-to-one communications focus into a “one to more” role.

“We have different models,” Chernock added. “3.0 could do on-demand as a hybrid. Broadcast can cover it by parking content in the receiver, or you can go from broadcast to broadband and it can complement really well.”

FACING REALITIES

Technical optimism about the interplay between 5G and 3.0 is tempered by market realities. In particular, the ability for future 5G handsets, tablets and other customer equipment to receive over-the-air 3.0 signals is likely to be limited since the wireless carriers and handset makers are expected to continue their longstanding policy of not integrating OTA broadcast receivers into mobile devices. But ATSC 3.0’s strength in mobile reception could help get over that hurdle.

“You’re increasingly going to see the efficacy of 3.0 aligned with mobile, especially 5G,” Aitken said. “ATSC 3.0 is compatible with 5 MHz spectrum. We have demonstrated the ability of 3.0 in relationship to CDMA [Code-Division Multiple Access, the cellular technology used by Verizon and Sprint in the U.S.]. If you take that wide swath from the lowest frequencies and look across the spectrum, you have everything from 600 MHz spectrum to AWS4, where 3.0 can fit in.”

EQUIPMENT AVAILABLE, MARKET PRESENCE

Telecom and broadcast technology suppliers are evaluating when and how to plunge into both the 3.0 and 5G markets. Aitken says that prior to the NAB show, about 40 vendors offered 3.0 products. Now, he says, triple that number of suppliers are “talking about their product paths.”

“Vendors who have been diverted to other markets are coming back to broadcasting," Aitken said, “bringing with them lessons learned from their experiences in the telecom market.”

Triveni Digital’s Chernock agrees. “Encoder makers and others are agnostic,” he said.

Ericsson is one company with feet in both camps. The company is in the process of spinning off their business targeting broadcasters, TV operators and content owners into a new company, Ericsson Media Solutions, according to Matthew Goldman, senior vice president of technology for EMS.

“This was done at least in part to allow for more focused investments in media technologies independent from the networking business,” he said. “ATSC 3.0 is a new market in which Ericsson Media Solutions fully intends to provide solutions to broadcasters, and indeed initial solutions already are available.”

The next reality check will be with consumers who confront both technologies. Verizon has already started field testing of 5G in selected markets, and AT&T intends to do the same this year — even before final 5G standards are adopted, scheduled for 2019. Since 3.0 tests will be underway soon in Phoenix, Cleveland, Dallas and other cities, it is likely that some early adopters may encounter both technologies soon — albeit structured for different purposes.

Editor’s Note: Welcome to NewBay’s inaugural edition of Need to Know, where we explain complex topics and how they apply to each industry we serve, on our websites and in our magazines. Keep coming back for future topics, to include 5G, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and more.

ALEXANDRIA, VA. — Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize the media industry in the same ways that the internet did 20 years ago. In its basic terms, blockchain technology encrypts data in an open, unsecured “decentralized ledger” environment, allowing a more direct path for transactions between users that are not tied to the traditional banking/credit industries. Bitcoin, the most well-known type of blockchain technology involves the use of “cryptocurrency” to initiate financial transactions, while “ethereum” uses several exchange methods, including bitcoin, but also offers “smart contracts” that expand the use of blockchain beyond just monetary transactions.

The television and media industry as a whole, can benefit from using blockchain technology in several ways — through advertising, distribution and content creation and verification. Whether the goal is better security and customer privacy or more flexibility, the end game is the same: eliminating — or at least lessening the impact of — the “middleman.”

See our full Need to Know for more facts about blockchain.

Blockchain is already a reality for many advertisers in the media industry. Later this year, Comcast plans to launch its new Blockchain Insights Platform, in collaboration with NBCUniversal, Disney, Altice USA, Channel 4, Cox Communications, Mediaset Italia and TF1 Group, which, according to the company, is aimed at “better ad planning, targeting, execution and measurement across screens.” The company says its service will help advertisers better target audiences by enhancing reporting and attribution metrics and that the “decentralized ledger” characteristics of blockchain encryption technology will improve subscriber privacy.

BATTLING PIRACY

On the distribution side, some pundits are predicting that blockchain could mean the end for what many consider the “ultimate middleman,” the pay TV (cable and satellite) industries. Whether that will happen is up for debate, but for the immediate future, media companies are looking to the protocol to help battle the incessant piracy that comes with digital distribution. According to Phil Gomes, blockchain leader at Edelman, “I personally believe that a lot of piracy comes from friction in the legal distribution mechanisms. Blockchain technology can enable more frictionless monetization of content to better compete with pirates.”

Media companies are also looking to blockchain to enable more secure rights payments. An example of this is the Open Music Initiative, which includes more than 200 members, including Sony Music, Warner, YouTube, Netflix and Spotify, with the goal of improving royalty payment transactions. The OMI recently disclosed that it is considering using blockchain “to radically simplify the way music rights owners are identified and compensated, resulting in sustainable business models for artists, entrepreneurs and music businesses alike.”

Blockchain could also be used to combat “fake news.” In a recent column for the Wall Street Journal, Mounir Ibrahim, vice president of strategic initiatives for Truepic and a former U.S. foreign services officer noted that blockchain encryption methods could be used to hold politicians accountable in an environment where artificial intelligence can be used to create realistic videos of individuals saying things they never really said.

“The ability to authenticate the provenance of digital media could do more than enable documentation of atrocities,” he wrote. “It could help international efforts to monitor elections, fight fraud, audit supply chains and enforce anticorruption methods. It could also provide a defense against new technology that lets users manipulate and doctor videos in a way that looks real.”

SMART CONTRACTS

By now, we’re familiar with the concept of crowdfunding new projects, companies or products through such services as KickStarter. But blockchain can play an important role in expanding the role of such services in the future. Through the use of “smart contracts” enabled by ethereum, participants can arrange transactions that would allow contributors to go beyond just donating to development of new programming to becoming active investors. Proponents claim that this methodology could help break the stranglehold that large movie studios have on what gets greenlighted in Hollywood.

A recent example of this type of project is the use of ethereum to crowdfund the new movie “Braid.” The film’s producers recently told the Huffington Post: “It’s definitely been interesting going this road of essentially breaking ground, and breaking the studio system by putting more power into the audience themselves. Giving them a choice to be able to participate and be involved in the process as a whole. It’s like uncharted territory.”

While the immediate impact of blockchain technology is being felt at the larger corporate levels of media, it may not be long before the benefits of the protocol are felt throughout the media distribution chain.

See our full Need to Know for more facts about blockchain.

Need to Know More?

Have a burning question about blockchain — or maybe request for a different topic you’d like to see us tackle? Email us at needtoknow@nbmedia.com and we’ll put our top minds on it!

Other Industries

• Blockchain and Media [Multichannel News]
• Blockchain and Video Production [Creative Planet Network]
• Blockchain and Radio [Radio World]
• Blockchain and AV [AVNetwork.com]
• Blockchain and Residential Integration [Residential Systems]
• Blockchain and Pro Audio [Pro Sound News]
• Blockchain and Education [Tech & Learning]
• Blockchain and Retail [TWICE]
• Blockchain as a Platform [Sound & Video Contractor]

Editor’s Note: Welcome to NewBay’s inaugural edition of Need to Know, where we explain complex topics and how they apply to each industry we serve, on our websites and in our magazines. Keep coming back for future topics, to include 5G, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and more.

From using an app to order your morning latte to reading an eBook before bed, we’re living more of our days — and our lives — online. As digital footprints grow and cyber infrastructures mature, more industries are exploring potential uses for blockchain. Blockchain is shared ledger technology for recording transactions and protecting the integrity of digital information.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

Imagine having a ledger book and inputting all relevant data about a purchase. Instead of sliding that ledger onto your bookshelf, you make it public and give a tiny piece of it to hundreds of others. The ledger can be seen as a data, but it is secure due to its advanced encryption. Blockchain is that distributed ledger, and it is not housed on one server. No one person or one server contains it. It is fundamentally decentralized.

Blockchain and Television
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Let’s say you want to buy a new track from your favorite band. You’d buy the digital file online using your Visa card. Visa would store that transaction, and the place you are purchasing the music from would store it. It would then be housed in two locations. On a blockchain, the transactional information doesn’t live in only two locations, it lives in hundreds, thousands, or even millions of places — living on the peer-to-peer computers running the blockchain encryption. A blockchain system replaces human guesswork and vulnerability of digital transactions with algorithms and advanced cryptography. It’s harder to hack. It’s a whole new way of thinking and a brand new method for securing digital information.

To recap: Blockchain creates a permanent record of digital transactions; it stays secure because the data is verified and encrypted. Blockchain operates on a decentralized peer-to-peer network, and its model is scalable. The blockchain’s digital ledger can be viewed and distributed, but it cannot be altered.

SECURE AND TRACEABLE

In a time when even SSL-protected environments are breached, blockchain’s transparent, decentralized approach to cybersecurity is increasingly attractive, according to Mike Walker, research director at global intelligence firm Gartner Research. Walker views blockchain as a “potentially transformative digital platform.”

Walker, also an author of Gartner’s “Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies 2017,” explained that blockchain’s traceability is another element of its growing appeal. “The Honduras government will use blockchain to secure land titles,” he said. Other use cases for the digital ledger include blockchain-enabled voting machines, online music payments, asset transfer, and cloud storage. Samsung SDS blockchain technology will work to bring more transparency to the city of Seoul. From to charity giving to insurance markets, any industry using all-digital assets is poised for disruption by blockchain.

WHO’S ON BOARD?

The technology was created to support the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, and its peer-to-peer model is best suited for similarly digital-only ecosystems.

“First-order applications for blockchain are purely digital,” explained professor Christian Catalini, founder of the MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab at the MIT Sloan School of Management. The reason we see it at scale in the financial sector, supporting online banking and accounting, is because “blockchain is good at digital verification,” he said.

WILL ALL INDUSTRIES BENEFIT?

Beyond the financial sector, blockchain is a candidate for any application that relies on digital value transactions. New sectors embracing blockchain are supply chain management and logistics, “file storage, data storage, bandwidth, and even electricity grids,” according to Catalini. “File storage online is easy to meter and measure,” he explained, and therefore an appropriate application for blockchain.

Gartner Research suggests that the “blockchain revolution promises to touch every industry,” but the realities are nuanced. While we see this technology being embraced to support auditable voting, currency, software, and digital data transactions, the all-digital nature of these ecosystems is why blockchain is both feasible, scalable, and makes economic sense. Where there is mix of physical data and digital data, however, requiring users to port information stored offline into an online system, blockchain’s adoption will take more time. Sectors such as education and healthcare are increasingly interested in blockchain — deploying pilots and experiments — but the evolution will be slower.

Established heavyweights and startups alike are exploring ways to leverage this technology to solve problems. Dell EMC Global CTO John Roese said that blockchain has "forced us to rethink how we deal with sharing technology and how we develop database architectures.” Google, IBM, Cisco, Bosch, and Oracle are a few notable examples of companies who have joined blockchain alliances, pilot programs, or are pursuing proprietary solutions of their own.

ONE CHAIN TO RULE THEM ALL?

Blockchain is available in open-source platforms and it offers quantifiable benefits for all-digital environments, but don’t mistake it for the panacea, warned a 2017 report from Tractica, a market intelligence firm that focuses on human interaction with technology. In that same report, Tractica analysts urged businesses to “avoid jumping on the blockchain bandwagon and instead view blockchain as a series of technological modules and concepts to selectively choose, apply, and/or complement other emerging technology trends.”

Blockchain also has limits beyond the digital-only prerequisite. A diversity of nodes will help defend against the so-called “51 percent” attacks that could compromise blockchain-supported data. A “51 percent attack,” according to “Coindesk” author Frederick Reese, “would find a single entity introducing a version of the blockchain that it controls and is accepted as valid.” But on one small college campus or in one building, is therequired physical diversity of blockchain peers possible? What makes it an ideal platform to scale may also limit it for smaller use cases.

NEW PARADIGM

While blockchain is already disrupting the financial sector, perhaps its greatest promise is how it radically reimagines a digital information infrastructure. With its decentralized, broadly distributed model, the immutability of its transactions, and vetting of online identities, blockchain builds trust into the very architecture of its system.

Blockchain may not be the right fit for every industry, nor is it an immediate answer to the question of how to safeguard digital information, but its paradigm shift is already inspiring next-level innovation.

Margot Douaihy is a content director with NewBay Media.

Need to Know More?

Have a burning question about blockchain — or maybe request for a different topic you’d like to see us tackle? Email us at needtoknow@nbmedia.com and we’ll put our top minds on it!

SOURCES AND MORE INFO

Catalini, Christian and Gans, Joshua S., “Some Simple Economics of the Blockchain” (Sept. 21, 2017). Rotman School of Management Working Paper No. 2874598; MIT Sloan Research Paper No. 5191-16.

Coindesk

The Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2017

Practical Blockchain: A Gartner Trend Insight Report

Tractica: Three Myths About Blockchain

Understand the Fundamentals of IBM Blockchain

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