The Society of Broadcast Engineers has an incoming executive director, a new website and a pending new technical training program, among other notable changes.

TVT's sister publication Radio World caught up with Wayne Pecena, recently elected to a second term as president of SBE, to ask him about its priorities in coming months.

The non-profit society is based in Indianapolis. Pecena is associate director of educational broadcast services at Texas A&M University, which operates the KAMU (FM/TV) public broadcast stations. Appropriately for an SBE leader, he has a lengthy string of certifications including CPBE, 8-VSB, AMD, DRB and CBNE; and he is a past recipient of the Radio World Excellence in Engineering Award.

Upon reelection, Pecena noted that the industry and broadcast engineers “have experienced change and challenge like never before. I want to ensure the society brings a sense of normalcy to our members,” through its professional development continuing education, certification and frequency coordination programs.

This conversation includes reference to the pending retirement of John Poray, SBE’s first and only full-time executive director since 1992. James Ragsdale, a former finance executive at Anderson University in Indiana, will succeed Poray in January.

Radio World: This has been a year like no other. Has there been an effect on the society’s activities?

Wayne Pecena: Certainly we have been impacted, while at the same time many things are normal.

The SBE office has remained open throughout the pandemic — granted, in a modified form, observing the restrictions placed by the state of Indiana and the city of Indianapolis. But the office is open and functioning, with all programs ongoing.

We’d been doing webinars for some time. Like a lot of organizations, we were already in that virtual environment, so it wasn’t necessary to hurry and ramp up. But certainly we have increased that.

We have seen phenomenal engagement from our members in the webinars. As of last month we had twice as many participants as the year before, and we haven’t gotten to the end of the year yet.

Obviously our in-person events have been canceled, whether it’s an SBE-only event or related ones — the NAB Show being the biggie that a lot of our in-person outreach is centered around.

Many of our local chapters have gone to a virtual meeting environment. That’s a blessing and a curse, in some ways; everyone probably prefers that in-person fellowship and networking at a chapter meeting. But [we’ve seen] increased attendance in some larger areas where it’s just not easy to get across town to a 7 p.m. chapter meeting; that travel can be significant.

I know I have enjoyed attending many local chapter meetings because of Zoom around the country.

RW: It seems like in the last year or two, there’s been a real mushrooming of resources made available to your members.

Pecena: Since day one of the SBE, professional development, continuing education, has been a priority. And as technology changes rapidly it creates opportunity for further programs.

Even before the COVID pandemic, we had been aggressively ramping up, particularly, our webinar programs. Those have been most popular with our members. You can attend at a prescribed date and time for that live presentation, but we see far more participation on-demand. Those are recorded and available to our members.

The feedback that we get from those programs is very positive.

RW: I understand you’ve got an updated IP networking series coming.

Pecena: That is just one of the webinars planned.

One of the things that we have seen, not just in IP networking, is a need for more in-depth content. There’s a limit to what you can do in a webinar session, which we try to keep to an hour to an hour and 15 minutes.

So for many topics — beginning with our RF 101 series and advanced RF series, a lot of the IP content — we’ve gone to multiple part webinars. There’s an AoIP series that, gosh, I’ve lost count of the number of parts, six to seven, maybe even eight parts.

That’s how we’re addressing more advanced topics, to have enough time to address those topics but at the same time break them into manageable chunks of time. You could offer a full-day, eight=hour seminar, but there’s not many broadcast engineers who have that kind of time to sit in front of the computer.

RW: You have a pretty big change with John Poray retiring as executive director, and Jim Ragsdale coming in. How do you feel about John leaving?

Pecena: Certainly his announcement was a surprise; at the same time it was not a surprise. From the board aspect, we knew that John was going to be retiring soon, but when that announcement came at the first of this year, it still was a shock now that we had a date in front of us.

John has been the face of SBE for 28 years. A lot of growth has occurred over that time, from the office staff that keeps everything running, to the number of programs that are offered. It’s never enjoyable to lose someone with John’s tenure and experience and of course his dedication to the society.

Early in his career, when he came to SBE, he thought he’d probably be at SBE for five years and then move on to the next step up. And here we are 28 years later and he’s still with us.

We offer John sincere thanks and congratulations for his dedication to SBE and everything that he has done. I think it’s safe to say there’s not a program offered through SBE that does not have his personal touch on it in one way or the other. He’s a very engaged leader.

I suppose if you’re going to retire, there’s probably a good time to do that: when things are pretty good. Yes, we have some challenges that the industry presents and the COVID situation has presented. But we have a society that is in sound financial shape. We have successful programs. We have a dedicated and supportive staff that takes care of all of that day-to-day stuff.

If you’re going to say goodbye to 28 years, this is probably a good time to leave, at the top of things.

RW: How did the search go and what struck you about Jim Ragsdale?

Pecena: Our response from potential candidates was a little overwhelming; I personally had felt that if we got maybe 10 applications we’re going to be good, and we had pushing 30. So then we had a different challenge in front of us. How do we weed through this?

We had a dedicated committee led by Joe Snelson, a former SBE president and [who has experience in] the corporate environment. He did a really good job in leading that effort.

We boiled things down to three candidates and engaged in face-to-face interviews in Indianapolis. The three candidates were uniquely different but all viable for the position.

Jim was chosen unanimously by the committee. He did his homework on the SBE. He brought the best perspective of looking ahead. Granted, he was from outside the industry, but at the same time, he had ties to the broadcast industry through family members who were engaged in broadcasting for many years, and he brought solid financial management strengths, particularly in a nonprofit environment, as well as solid reference evaluations from previous roles.

Everyone felt he was that right fit for SBE.

RW: What should we look for from SBE in coming months?

Pecena: I think we step back and take a new breath and give Jim Ragsdale a time to get acclimated. We have several new programs that are launching, I don’t want to remotely suggest we’re just going to stop doing things; but give Jim an opportunity to get up to speed, making his own evaluations. He brings a solid financial background and [can make] his own assessments with that.

And this is strictly a personal feeling, but we probably need to revisit our strategic planning efforts. In our last event about three years ago, we came up with a plan, and many of the aspects of that plan have been implemented. You’ve noticed the new website, for instance; the need for that was identified in that strategic plan.

What was also identified but frankly has not happened has been some of our expanded outreach activities engaging in other related organization’s activities — whether it’s a state broadcast conference or local chapter events. Of course with the COVID situation, that kind of stuff went away.

So I think once he gets a solid footing by mid year, we need to reevaluate our strategic plan. Not necessarily do it all over again, though maybe that’s the best way to do it. In today’s fast changing environment. I’m not sure doing strategic planning every five years is the right time. Maybe it should be shortened a little bit.

Our focus, I think, will continue to be on education certification, our frequency coordination activities that are going on. You don’t necessarily hear a lot about frequency coordination, because it’s going on in the background, but there’s a lot of work that goes into that, particularly with the Department of Defense contract that SBE is involved in.

RW: The direction of membership trends is down over time.

Pecena: Yes it is down, That was a big focus of our last strategic planning effort — ways to increase that membership, and that was the basis of our outreach program.

We still need to focus on the increasing membership.

RW: We’ve seen a lot of attention in the national discussion over diversity, and as we’ve reported, radio engineering in the United States certainly has not got a lot of racial diversity, or age diversity for that matter. What role, if any, does the SBE have in this discussion?

Pecena: That is an aspect that needs to be on our radar. I’ll just say, it honestly has not been a dedicated focus. We have been focused more broadly on increasing our membership by providing desirable, needed services to our members regardless of race or demographic background. I think we have some more fundamental things to work on before we dedicate our resources to a specific area. That’s my personal feeling.

We are working too on revamping our international program, with a new committee chair who is going to take a look at that aspect; that brings more of an international perspective.

RW: SBE has always kept a voice on Capitol Hill when there are technical issues being discussed. Are there things that SBE is following closely in Washington that we should know about?

Pecena: Certainly I think that “spectrum grabs” will continue, and we continue to comment.

When the December SBE Signal newsletter comes out, there’ll be a piece that Chris Imlay wrote regarding some actions questioning the ethics of broadcast engineers in general. I think he’s done a really good job of responding to that.

We’ll continue to do our best to help the SBE make good decisions. A lot of times decisions are made without the true technology impact [being considered]. We’ll do our best to keep our opinions in front of those FCC staffers.

RW: The 2021 calendar already looks different with no spring NAB Show. How are your events and meetings affected?

Pecena: Historically the SBE has two major in-person events a year, the first centered around the NAB in the spring, and then the national meeting, which occurs in the fall, typically in conjunction with a regional broadcasting event. This year it was to be Chapter 22’s Broadcast and Technology Expo in Syracuse, N.Y.

With everything shuffling around and the NAB moving to an October show next year, it was not felt we could do both of those within three weeks; so the 2021 NAB will feature our traditional “NAB events” with that national meeting and awards presentation, which of course this year were done virtually.

It looks good on paper today. We’ll see how things work out.

Everyone is hopeful that we can get back to some in-person events at some point. One of the things we’re always excited to do is our regional Ennes workshops. Outside of one early this year, they were all canceled, so I’m hopeful that at some point in 2021, we can get back to those in-person regional Ennes workshops around the country. We have several chapters or state broadcast associations that are interested in that.

INDIANAPOLIS—The Society of Broadcast Engineers has tallied the votes and determined that Wayne Pecena has been re-elected to serve a second term as the society’s president.

Pecena, CPBE, 8-VSB, AMD, DRB, CBNE, is the associate director of educational broadcast services at Texas A&M University, which operates the KAMU FM & TV public broadcast stations. He is a member of SBE Chapter 99 in College Station, Texas.

“I look to my second term as our industry and our personal lives have experienced change and challenge like never before,” Pecena said. “I want to ensure the Society brings a sense of normalcy to our members. This uniformity is accomplished through our professional development continuing education, certification and frequency coordination programs, while making the right decisions for change in the future to insure continued value to our members.”

Other results from the election included Andrea Cummis, CBT, CTO of Chapter 15 New York, Roseland, N.J., being elected as vice president; Kevin Trueblood, CBRE, CBNT of Chapter 90 Southwest Fla., Ft. Myers, Fla., as secretary; and Ted Hand, CPBE, 8-VSB, AMD, DRB of Chapter 45 Charlotte, Charlotte, N.C., as treasurer. All were elected to one-year terms that will start on Sept. 23.

Jim Leifer, CPBE, of Andover, Md., continues as immediate past president.

The following individuals were elected to two-year terms on the SBE Board of Directors, also starting Sept. 23:

• Stephen Brown, CPBE, CBNT; Chapter 80 Fox Valley, Appleton, Wis. 
• Roswell Clark, CPBE, CBNT; Chapter 39 Tampa Bay Area, Clearwater, Fla. 
• Kirk Harnack, CBRE, CBNE; Chapter 103 Nashville, Nashville, Tenn. 
• Thomas McGinley, CPBE, AMD, CBNT; Chapter 16 Seattle, Missoula, Mont. 
• Shane Toven, CBRE, CBNT; Chapter 43 Sacramento, Antelope, Calif. 
• Fred Willard, CPBE, 8-VSB, CBNT; Chapter 37 District of Columbia, Washington, D.C. 

The national board of directors for SBE is responsible for the development of policy and determines the programs and services the society provides to its members.

For more information, visit www.sbe.org.  

This release comes directly from the Society of Broadcast Engineers

INDIANAPOLIS—The broadcast engineering community was both shocked and saddened as we learned of the passing of John Lyons on Nov. 28, 2019. John was a bigger-than-life icon of the broadcast engineering community in New York City where he most recently led the design and build of state-of-the-art TV broadcast facilities at One World Trade Center as the director of broadcast communications for the Durst Corporation. His career accomplishments extended well beyond OWTC as his handprints were on all major New York City broadcast and communications facilities from Empire State to 4 Times Square.

John was a true friend of the SBE, having served on the board of directors from 1974 to 1978 and was elected a Fellow in 1977. My first interaction with John was in 2014 soon after it was announced that I was named the 11th recipient of the Radio World Excellence in Engineering award. When I received that award, his email to me simply stated, "Congratulations to #11 from #3." John was the third recipient of that award in 2006. His simple, no-nonsense and to-the-point email was reflective of his character.

In 2016, John hosted the SBE Education Summit at One World Trade Center. I have always felt his personal tour of the unbelievable broadcast facilities, then under construction, was a special occasion. Today, that time is to be cherished.

We offer his family the most sincere condolences.

INDIANAPOLIS—The Society of Broadcast Engineers has announced the results of its 2019 election for the national board of directors, revealing Wayne Pecena has been chosen as the next president of the SBE, replacing Jim Leifer, who becomes the immediate past president.

Pecena, a member of SBE’s chapter 99 in College Station, Texas, is the assistant director of educational broadcast services at Texas A&M University, where he also serves as the director of engineering for public broadcast stations KAMU FM & TV. Pecena will serve a one-year term as the society’s president.

“I look to continue the strategic planning implementation work that began under President Leifer, while insuring that the future certification, continuing education and professional service needs of all SBE members are met as our industry and technology continues to change,” Pecena said.

Three other officers were elected to one-year terms: Andrea Cummis (Chapter 15, New York; Roseland, N.J.) was voted vice president; Kevin Trueblood (Chapter 90, Southwest, Fla.; Ft. Myers, Fla.) will become the secretary; and Ted Hand (Chapter 45, Charlotte, N.C.) was voted to the position of treasurer.

Six individuals were also elected to serve two-year terms on the board of directors: Mark Fehlig (Chapter 40 San Francisco; Walnut Creek, Calif.); Charles Keiler (Chapter 53 South Florida; Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.); Geary Morrill (Chapter 91 Central Michigan; Saginaw, Mich.); Jason Ornellas (Chapter 43 Sacramento, Calif.); Chris Tarr (Chapter 28 Milwaukee); and Dan Whealy (Chapter 96 Rockford; Waterloo, Iowa).

The newly elected officers and board members will begin their terms on Oct. 16, where they and the previously elected board members will continue to develop policy and programs for its members.

INDIANAPOLIS—The Society of Broadcast Engineers’ executive committee has approved Wayne Pecena to serve as its new vice president on April 17, filling a vacancy left by RJ Russell’s April 12 resignation.

Pecena had been serving a term as SBE secretary, so his appointment causes several other executive committee shifts for this term. After SBE President Jim Leifer selected Pecena, he elevated board member Kevin Trueblood to SBE secretary. Therefore, former board member Jason Ornellas will take over Trueblood’s seat, while current board member Steve Brown will join Roz Clark as board representatives on the executive committee.

Russell stepped down because the society may hire his company, Technical Broadcast Solutions, for a to-be-announced-project.

“Losing RJ as the VP of the SBE is unfortunate, but understandable given the circumstances,” Leifer said in the announcement. “While his skill and abilities will be missed on the SBE leadership team, we are fortunate to have a deep bench of talent to continue the SBE’s work.”

Pecena has served on the SBE board of directors since 2012 and was elected secretary in 2016. He is an SBE fellow and chairs the SBE Education Committee. In his day job, Pecena is the assistant director of educational broadcast services in the Office of Information Technology at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas.

Radio World also honored Pecena with the Radio World Excellence in Engineering Award in 2014.

COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS—The television broadcast technical plant is changing or has changed for many. The traditional baseband based serial digital interface (SDI) commonplace since the inception of digital television is being replaced by an IP-based infrastructure. The migration to an all-IP infrastructure brings several advantages, including:

• Cost savings by using commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS) IT hardware. Enterprise routers and switches have enormous economies of scale compared to the broadcast world’s purpose-built, industry-specific infrastructure.

• Greater system workflow flexibility. The inherent architecture flexibility provides for a change in workflow processes without a system re-wire commonly found in the baseband SDI plant. With a COTS Ethernet switch, high-capacity, non-blocking signal routing can be implemented in far less space than the traditional matrix SDI router.

• Format and resolution agnostic. Enterprises and streaming video service providers already use COTS infrastructure for a wide variety of formats and resolutions, from 720p through 1080p at 60fps and 4k. The use of IT industry standards also enables the high levels of interoperability commonly found among COTS equipment manufacturers.

• Simplified interconnection wiring. Installation costs are significantly reduced because less interconnection cabling means less labor. The SDI plant’s fixed signal path is replaced with a “star” architecture found in enterprise IT networks. System changes also are implemented by software configuration rather than facility re-cabling.

The use of an IP network in a broadcast facility has been commonplace for some time now. One example is the familiar RJ-45 Ethernet jack on many broadcast devices. Use of the IP network has been primarily for command and control, monitoring or file transfer.

But when an IP network is mentioned in the context of transporting real-time broadcast media, an instant lack of trust is often a common response. Many broadcast professionals are simply unable to accept the perceived risk involved for mission-critical content transmission. The “belt and suspenders” mindset of the broadcast engineer simply does not permit the perceived unreliable operation found in the IP environment. Reinforcement for this mindset is often obtained from one’s personal experience with the Internet.

ENABLING PROFESSIONAL MEDIA OVER MANAGED IP NETWORKS

To enable interoperability between system components from different manufacturers, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) established the ST 2110 standard. SMPTE 2110 is considered an umbrella standard, or a family of individual functional standards, that allow for the transmission of uncompressed audio and video over an IP network.

SMPTE 2110 is a suite of standards for transmission of “professional media over managed IP networks.” Audio, video and ancillary data are treated as separate, uncompressed essence data streams. Individual standards focus upon functional components of the suite, such as video (ST 2110-20) or audio (ST 2110-30). Ancillary data may include captioning data (ST 2110-40) that is associated with the media essence streams. A unique feature of ST 2110 allows essence data streams to be sent or routed over different physical paths and re-assembled at a destination end point by the incorporation of a synchronization mechanism (ST 2110-10).

Several SMPTE standards incorporate established Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Request for Comments (RFC) provisions into the standards. Examples include the ST 2110-20 standard incorporating the IETC RFC #4175 for uncompressed video transmission and the ST 2110-10 system standard incorporating the IETF RFC #3550 Real Time Protocol (RTP). The IETF RFC’s are considered the “Bible” of IP networking.

It is important to make a couple of critical distinctions regarding the SMPTE ST 2110 standard. First, what is known as the public “Internet” is not the intended physical transport platform. By definition stated in the ST 2110 title, a “managed” IP network is the transport platform. A managed IP network is a private network that is built on private physical facilities or more likely a telco common carrier provided Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) network. Performance can be specified in a Service Level Agreement (SLA) to ensure reliable delivery of real-media content such as high-definition, uncompressed video. Differentiated services are utilized to meet and maintain a contracted Quality of Service (QoS).

In contrast, the public Internet is a maze of independent interconnected networks with no end-to-end performance coordination or governance. Thus, the term “best effort” is used to describe the QoS of the public Internet. This is simply not an appropriate network choice in which to implement SMPTE ST 2110.

THE CIA TRIAD OF CYBERSECURITY

The private nature of the physical network platform also becomes a first step in mitigating cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Nevertheless, ST 2110 is an IP-based data network, so the IT industry’s accepted security practices should be deployed in any implementation.

Network cybersecurity mitigation involves a number of individual steps or practices rather than one single step. Overall, the goal of network security is to meet the attributes defined by the “CIA Triad” as illustrated by Fig. 2. The triad is based upon the three attributes of: Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability. It should be noted that the phrase “AIC Triad” may also be used to avoid confusion with a US government agency of the same acronym.

Confidentiality refers to the ability of the network infrastructure to not allow disclosure of the data or information traversing the network infrastructure to any unauthorized user or host. Integrity refers to the ability of the network to ensure that the data has not been altered by an unauthorized user or host. And availability refers to the ability of the network infrastructure to ensure that resources are available only to authorized users or hosts.

[Read: Need To Know: Cybersecurity]

Cybersecurity events such as a Denial of Service (DoS) attack or a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack target the availability attribute by impacting access to the network resources by legitimate users. A Man in the Middle (MITM) attack seeks to destroy the integrity attribute by altering the data or information traversing the network.

Industry best practices begin with network design as the first step in cyber-security threat mitigation. The network is segmented or layered into functional areas as dictated by the business case use, regulatory policy or organizational policy. Each layer or segment has unique use or purpose with an established security access policy. Inner layers are considered the core network segments and are the most secure.

The characteristics of an MPLS network provide an economical platform for ST 2110 implementation.

Other security attributes involve physical network infrastructure equipment protection from tampering through locked enclosures, cabinets or cages. Implementation of Ethernet switch port security is another capability that a managed switch offers to control what host device can be attached to a switch port. Packet filtering can be implemented by an Access Control List (ACL) to allow select host interoperability between network segments. The ACL filtering can be based upon several IP header fields such as addresses, protocol and port number.

Infrastructure equipment management should be implemented in an out-of-band manner. Out-of-band management also allows the use of the public Internet for accessibility implemented in a secure manner such as an encrypted Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection to the management network. This approach provides an air-gap between content transport network segments and the management network.

All of these outlined practices come together to define a secure network rather than complying with a single attribute. Cybersecurity can’t be ignored or left as an afterthought. At the end of the day, the broadcast engineer should have trust and confidence in a SMPTE ST 2110 network that is implemented as intended by the published standard utilizing established industry security practices.

Wayne M. Pecena is a IEEE BTS Distinguished Lecturer and Director of Engineering, Texas A&M University, KAMU FM & TV.

ARLINGTON, VA.--Broadcast engineers from around the globe converged here for three days last week to exchange information about the industry and broadcast technology developments at the annual IEEE Broadcast Technology Society Fall Symposium.

In spite of the demands of the ongoing television spectrum repack, some 160 engineering consultants, equipment manufacturers, and broadcast group personnel took time away from their duties to join academics and others from as far away as Russia, Brazil and South Korea at the Oct. 9-11 tech con.

Next-Gen TV was the hot topic this year, with nearly half of the presentations falling into this category and nine directly focused on ATSC 3.0’s potential, field testing, deployment, business models, and evaluation metrics. Presentations even included some “one step beyond” views into the future television experiences. One described methodology for transmitting information to provide sensory stimulation beyond sight and sound, and a lunchtime keynote presenter described taking virtual reality out to the ball game.

BRINGING BACK THE ACTION WITH VR

In her presentation, Uma Jayaram, engineering director for Intel Sports True VR division, described why her company decided to launch a virtual reality TV sports production element, and discussed some of the technical issues that had to be resolved to make it possible.

“The timeline for [introduction and acceptance] of new use cases is dramatically shortening,” Jayaram said. “The telephone took 75 years to reach the 50 million user mark; ‘Angry Birds’ took just over a month to reach this mark.

“Companies such as Intel realize that you cannot afford to join the party after it’s well underway and things are moving really fast," she continued. "So, you place some bets, you get into the ecosystem, you play with it, you try to move it, and essentially see what’s going on in a more involved manner.

“When you think of Intel, you ordinarily think of the more traditional segments—CPUs, graphics and so on, but some of the big bets we are making have to do with artificial intelligence, VR, hygiene, and automated driving” observing that all of these emerging technologies involved moving and processing massive amounts of data, an Intel specialty.

“These areas are moving so fast that you want to be in that ecosystem,” said Jayram in explaining Intel’s decision to launch the sports business unit two years ago.

“On ‘game day’ we show up with our cameras, we set up alongside the networks and stream VR experiences in near real time,” she said. “We provide [feeds] to about 10 right’s-holding broadcasters.”

In her presentation, Jayaram did flag some VR limitations, noting that perhaps the biggest centers on the cumbersome headgear that consumers must don.

“I can’t watch with a headset for more than a few hours,” she said.

As one solution, her unit is creating shorter duration or “snackable content” sports highlights packages. “We’re also working to provide a better user interface…something that would allow a person to do VR viewing while still interacting with friends,” she said.

She also described some technical considerations in VR that don’t really exist in ordinary television coverage.

“Time synchronization is very important when you have six separate cameras that all have to be synched together along with the audio," she said. "Seamless ‘stitching’ of the multiple views is also very important.”

Branding of the viewing apps for consumers is also something of a challenge as Intel's Sports unit is dealing with multiple broadcast entities operating in several countries. “In the U.S., NBC has the rights, so we have to have an NBC app with the 'NBC look and feel' and colors. We now have to put out about 33 of these apps [to accommodate the various broadcast entities and viewing devices].”

Jayaram also noted that a business model has to be established before widespread deployment of VR sports coverage can take place.

“We’re looking at subscription models,” she said. “In the end you have to make money. This is still being worked out.”

WHAT’S HAPPENING OUT IN THE [3.0] FIELD?

Status reports on ATSC 3.0 rollouts in three U.S. markets were part of the conference program, with WRAL-TV’s Transmitter Supervisor Matt Brandes describing activities at his company’s Raleigh-Durham, N.C. test facility. Fred Baumgartner, director of Next Gen TV implementation for Sinclair Broadcast Group, provided an update on the station group's Dallas-Ft. Worth ATSC 3.0 single-frequency network initiative, and Pearl TV’s Dave Folsom described goings-on in connection with the "Phoenix Model Market project.

All offered some lessons learned and dos and don’ts takeaways.

“If you’re a person blessed with the privilege of setting up a brand new ATSC 3.0, please download and read the ATSC recommended practices on the Physical Layer, go play with your toys, and then come back and read the recommended practices again,” said Brandes. “Also, buying a new encoder might do more for your coverage than putting in two transmitters. If you can get three dB improvement [in encoding], this is equivalent to doubling your power.

Speaking for Pearl TV, Folsom noted that early equipment implementations are still not complete and software versioning is a big issue

“Anytime someone makes a software upgrade, everything downstream quits working, including the receivers," he said. 

Folsom added that the ability to interchange encoding, packaging and encapsulation units isn’t fully developed yet. “You should be able to connect up the unit and it should work, but it doesn’t," he said. "The standards are clear, [but] there’s a lot of misunderstanding among manufacturers about what needs to be there.”

Baumgartner observed that monitoring and control in connection with SFN transmitter sites is a potentially big issue. “We’re just starting to put our toes in that water and we can run [the Dallas-Ft. Worth installations] from our handheld devices, but at some point, it’s going to start to look like MediaFLO and then you’re got 300 transmitters out there and you have to start thinking about trucks, spare parts, and support infrastructure," he said. "You have to figure out how to make it all run economically.”

‘HACKING’ NEXT-GENERATION TELEVISION

Although the ATSC 3.0 racehorse is barely out of the stable, due to its hybrid broadcast/internet delivery, concerns are already surfacing about vulnerability of signals to manipulation by pranksters or others with darker agendas. Broadcast cybersecurity expert Wayne Pecena examined this in his presentation, “Hacking ATSC 3.0.”

He noted that the broadcast community was not exactly a stranger to nefarious intercepts of program streams, citing the 1986 takeover of HBO’s satellite transponder by “Captain Midnight,” and the “Max Headroom” incident the following year in which the studio-to-transmitter feeds of Chicago stations WGN-TV and WTTW were breached and third-party content aired.

Pecena observed that those incidents had required a lot of technical savvy and large equipment costing many thousands of dollars. “Now someone with a tablet computer sitting in a coffee shop can wreak a lot more havoc,” he said.

He cited the potential risks to broadcasters of ATSC 3.0 stream hijacking, including dead air, loss of revenue, public embarrassment, data breaches, potential legal liability, loss of public trust, and impact on station resources.

Pecena urged station operators to gain a thorough understanding of their IP systems and think about ways in which they might be compromised, observing that “the Internet of Things really provides only minimal, if any, safeguards against hacks, with security often being an afterthought or a ‘neverthought.’”

He said that even with the security components inherent in ATSC 3.0 and a tightening of security at broadcast facilities, there still could be breaches occurring within the home environment.

“The consumer industry must adopt stronger IoT security features,” he said. “The weakest link determines the overall security of any system.”

During the gathering the society also recognized Merrill Weiss with its highest honor, the Jules Cohen award for excellence in broadcast engineering. 

The BTS Symposium moves to Hartford, Conn. in 2019. Conference dates are Oct. 1-3.

For a comprehensive list of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see our ATSC3 silo.

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