On April 5, 2015, Yves Bigot, the director-general of TV5Monde, was in the midst of a dinner with a fellow broadcaster, celebrating the launch of his company’s latest channel, when he received an unexpected volley of messages. All twelve TV5Monde channels were knocked off-air. A massive cyberattack was underway, infecting the stations’ equipment in rapid succession. If top technical staff had not been on site working to handle the new channel launch, and had they not acted quickly to unplug the source of the infection, TV5Monde might have lost all of its satellite distribution contracts due to the outage, placing the entire company in jeopardy.
Although few broadcasters have experienced a TV5Monde-level of attack, a host of entertainment companies, including Sony, Netflix and HBO, have also suffered at the hands of hackers. Odds are that an equally if not more devastating attack will hit another broadcast organization.
Broadcasters are just as vulnerable to cyberattacks and malware infections as any other business, government, or non-profit organization in the world. Virtually no aspect of radio, TV station, network operations is truly isolated from the internet. Every…
