Cybersecurity within mass media

-

SQL injections and DNS attacks are the most common cybersecurity threats to media agencies.


                                        Source: Youtube.com/trendmicro

Technological advances in mass media and communication have shaped and changed society in many ways. One major way is through cybersecurity. Before 1990 there was no such word as cybersecurity but all of that changed when the internet quickly became a part of people’s lives. According to Salem Press Encyclopedia, only 1% of telecommunication networks sent information over the internet in 1993 (Warnes, 2019). Compare that to the 107 trillion emails sent, or the 255 million websites in 2010. It may come as no surprise that the same year seen 262 billion spam emails sent.

Cybersecurity is something we are hearing about more often due in part to large companies and organizations being hacked into. One comes to mind that affected close to 148 million U.S. citizens is when Equifax was hacked in 2017. Many asked how can a company like Equifax be hacked and what does that mean for the 148 million of us that had our personal information stolen? Unfortunately, Equifax is not the exception as we recall several companies over the years have had their customer or client information stolen. Mass media companies should be more aware of cybersecurity because many communication devices can easily be hacked into due to the Internet of Things (IoT). 

 Even still, we expect our media companies and devices to be up-to-date with the latest security features and we expect our personal information to be safe. Unfortunately, the perception is not the reality as Media agencies' most common cybersecurity issues come in the form of Domain Name System (DNS) hacks, SQL injections and content pirating (Zurkus, 2018). 




References

Trend Micro. (2018, August 22). How Cybercrimnals Can Use You Social Media Activity Against You [Video]. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zbqo7MGVElw&t=63s

Warnes, K. P. (2019). Cybersecurity. Retrieved from Salem Press Encyclopedia: https://eds-b-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/eds/detail/detail?vid=2&sid=18bace6e-7395-426a-9b87-4e5b7a1a890f%40pdc-v-sessmgr03&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#AN=89677538&db=ers

Zurkus, K. (2018, September 11). How Can Media Companies Be More Confident in Their Cybersecurity Strategy and Policy? Retrieved from Security Intelligence.com: https://securityintelligence.com/how-can-media-companies-be-more-confident-in-their-cybersecurity-strategy-and-policy/

 



 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Technology has shaped how we publish online content

-
Image
 Communication professionals may find writing for digital media having its own set of rules that does not always apply to traditional writing. While the two may have similarities, one cannot be used in place for the other. The usage of bullet points, subheads, and short copy is recommended if you want to engage your audience without making the post too boring. According to sdadata.org there are four primary objectives to writing content online. The four are to inform, educate, entertain and inspire which honestly are not that different in traditional content writing and can also be used when publishing content through a traditional medium. However, other skills such as storytelling, learning search engine optimization and call-to-action requests are specific to digital writing and are considered standard for every post. Source: Visualistan.com For those writers that may not be as skilled in writing digital content, many apps and online services are available to help in improving the
Read more

Professional communicators facing major tech/media challenges

-
Image
 Journalists and other communication professionals face unique challenges with advances in technology. Media corporations such as Vice Media and Murdoch owned NewsCorp blames Big Tech companies for taking the majority of digital advertising revenues.  Between 2011-2018 Facebook and Google's combined revenue was more than $171.2 billion.                                                                    Photo credit: Denis Charlet/ AFP/Getty Images According to nexttv.com, tech giants such as Facebook and Google together are controlling almost 80% of digital advertising revenue that is locally-focused (Eggerton, 2020). This is a significant shift from just a decade or two ago when journalists and local media agencies handled local ads and tech companies still used traditional media for advertising.  One major problem journalists have with these big tech companies has to do with how they siphon local news to their platforms by aggregating the local news and placing it on their platf
Read more

New media skills needed for modern journalists

-
Image
 Today's brand of journalism has changed dramatically since the public use of the internet but much more so since the advent of social media. As we can see from this chart provided by the Pew Research Center , Americans use of social media has increased greatly in the last 15 years.  Source: Pew Research Center   This number is only expected to go up in the next several years. With that being said journalists need to learn new skills if they want to stay competitive …and employed. New media skills include learning how to read datasets and analytics, photo and video editing software, digital publishing, search engine optimization and online marketing. The training is usually paid for those already working for a media entity. However, for those that consider themselves citizen or independent journalists, training can be somewhat hard and/or expensive. Some companies such as Adobe (which is widely used throughout the media industry and regarded as the standard) have recognized this
Read more