No Weak Links: Security for Streaming and Remote Production
We all know the arguments in favor of moving content around on IP circuits, and particularly the public internet. It’s ubiquitous, it’s affordable, and it’s scalable and flexible. The technology is well advanced, and widely recognized open standards like RIST make it easy to build workflows.
It also marks a transformational shift. Traditional broadcast architectures had a large, air-conditioned room in the middle of the building, which contained all the equipment. Getting in there required passing through several security checks. Software-defined architectures and IP connectivity turns this model on its head, with creation, processing and control sited where you need it as a business, not where the hardware tells you.
This is a great benefit for the media enterprise. Hardware stacks are smaller and less expensive, real estate costs go down, and creativity is liberated. You can see why the industry has seen it as such a bonus and is going all in on the transformation. I would suggest, though, that in that rush we can sometimes overlook potential drawbacks. In particular, the temptation is to take too cursory a look at security.
Security Concerns Can’t be Overstated
No-one needs to be reminded of the dangers posed by cyber-crime. Businesses around the world have been hit by ransomware; a very large, very popular UK retailer has been offline for months in 2025 following an attack.
Now imagine you are in the control room, in the final moments before the Super Bowl or the Olympic 100 meters final, and all the screens are replaced by a demand for large numbers of bitcoin. Or a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack wipes out your resources and takes you off air.
These threats are real, and there is absolutely no reason to think that media businesses are somehow exempt. Indeed, because of the high-profile nature of broadcasting, I would suggest it puts us high on the target list. There have been some attacks that have cost significant sums, but we should consider ourselves lucky that there have been no disasters so far.
Each year, the World Economic Forum, in association with business consultancy Accenture, publishes its Global Cybersecurity Outlook. In 2024, it said “the number of organizations that maintain minimum viable cyber resilience is down 30%. While large organizations demonstrated remarkable gains in cyber resilience, Small and Medium Enterprises showed a significant decline.” SMEs, like many media companies, are not getting better but actively getting worse at responding to potential threats: a 30% decline.
The 2025 report continued the theme, showing a widening gap between large and small organizations, adding “35% of small organizations believe that their cyber resilience is inadequate”. The threats are real, and we must, for commercial, regulatory and reputational reasons, take them seriously.
Weak Links Compromise Security
RIST is generally considered to be a good platform to build robust networks, in part because security is an integral component of the main profile, which includes AES encryption and advanced authentication options. While these features are good, I would suggest that you have to think harder and further to cover every security risk.
All the devices in the content flow may be RIST compliant, but are they themselves secure? Many run on Linux, a general-purpose operating system, and there is no guarantee that each device is running the latest set of security patches. Should you be looking at hardware running a specialist media operating system, which does not support other sorts of application so does not have other vulnerabilities?
There is a temptation to think that a stream is end-to-end secure because the edge devices are trusted. What about all the devices in between, in data centers and internet hubs. Can you be sure they are all safe?
At what points in the network will the stream be decrypted? Why is it being decrypted? Can you not achieve the same result with rist2rist?
Think, too, about the hardware devices at each node. Have you evaluated each device? Does the hardware have weak points, even if they are not in the content chain. Does it need to phone home for updates or license confirmation? Is that a vulnerability? How are updates blocked when in use: do you really want an update, reboot and reset to start during a live show?
We’ve seen some devices, even professional devices in real-world use, that store passwords in the clear, which makes it pretty simple for the bad guy. Even if they are more robust than that, are you physically securing each device? We make a great deal about how compact and portable edge devices are today, but that makes them easy to steal or leave behind, giving hackers the luxury of time to break in and find your network routing maps.
This takes us towards human factors. Well-designed systems can still be brought down by people. It may be incompetence or corruption that leads to a hardware device being lost, so physically limiting access must be considered. Is your sign-on and password process robust? Is single sign-on managing privileges correctly, or can a sound operator change all the IP addresses in the network?
Finally, think carefully about the processes that go on around the actual stream. Intercom, text and document transfers are all a core part of remote production and delivery, and they can be points of significant risk. When establishing circuits or troubleshooting, someone may ask for a destination IP address and, if you reply in the clear, all your security efforts are lost. Rather than trusting to Zoom or Teams, wrap your comms into the security of the stream.
Embedding Security as a Design Principle
A zero-trust architecture works on the principle that users and devices should not be trusted by default, even if connected to your own network. Identify every point in the content flow and determine that it is, without doubt, secure. Test and verify the complete system, and test again. Then develop a new testing and challenging protocol and run that.
Yes, this is hard. Much harder than sending a RIST stream into the internet and picking it up where you need it. But I cannot emphasize enough that cyberthreats are real and if the media industry has got off relatively lightly so far, then that just means it’s coming soon.
A well-planned cyber attack on a media enterprise will spell financial ruin, or reputational disaster, or even political upheaval. Develop a comprehensive security plan, or be prepared for a sharp and unexpected change of career.
[Editor's note: This is a contributed article from RIST Forum. Streaming Media accepts vendor bylines based solely on their value to our readers.]
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