Volume 11, Issue 13 — July 16, 2019

rAVeDS — Volume 11, Issue 13 — July 16, 2019

July 16, 2019 | Volume: 11 | Issue: 13

There’s been a lot of news lately about cybersecurity, particularly where AV and digital signage are vulnerable to malware and ransomware. There’s a serious issue with UC provider Zoom’s software that makes it possible for an unwanted person to access another user’s web camera and turn it on. Draper’s electronic systems, including communcation and manufacturing, were down last week and are still limited due to a ransomware attack. Logitech also had a security issue. Paul Konikowski has a guest post today explaining the issues and talking about the threats to our industry and our clients today, and Andrew Davis also writes about the “imminent disaster” that is cybersecurity for the AV industry.

Dr. Fred Ampel also stands on his soapbox and rants a bit about standards in the industry, with his amusingly-titled column, Is It a Standard If Nobody Uses It? I recently wrote and compiled a lengthy standards guideline document for advertising in digital signage (DOOH), so I feel his pain. (Read it here! It’s totally free!) But I did appreciate the opportunity to use my favorite xkcd comic.

-Sara Abrons

COLUMNS

+ Imminent Disaster — The Looming AV Threat [Andrew Davis]

If you are already working on rebuttals to the effect of, "nobody wants all that security," or "we don’t want to add extra complexity to the installation," or "we aren’t cybersecurity experts," or the worst and most likely, "our software devs have assured us that our product is inherently safe so there is no need to waste any resources on this…it’s fine," please feel free to address the responses to me and send them right to that magical place where discarded drafts go because this is not something you can pass on. The Titanic was unsinkable and Enigma was uncrackable, yet here we are.

+ Cybersecurity Lessons Learned from Zoom, Logitech and Draper [Paul Konikowski, CTS-D]

I hope that this week will mark the “watershed” moment in audiovisual industry cybersecurity. Over the last few years, there have been a handful of security vulnerabilities discovered in touch panels, wireless presentation systems, video conferencing codecs, digital billboard signage players and other devices. But this week is different. Unlike security vulnerabilities in devices and software that can be downplayed, patched and/or swept under the rug by manufacturers, data breaches are governed by laws like the EU's General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. The mere chance of a data breach this large should make AV companies realize how bad it could be.

+ Is It a Standard if Nobody Uses it? [Dr. Frederick Ampel]

The AV/IT industry has a problem, one of its own making and one that is getting worse by the micro-second. There are just too many conflicting and confusing “standards” and best practices. Between those created by trade groups, those developed by technical associations or technology consortia (worse yet as these tend to be proprietary) and the flavor variations created by various international overlays on existing standards, the pile of paper is beginning to reach the size of a major mountain range in height.