The film industry brings in 69.9 billion dollars yearly in the US. Long-term film location facilities are home to extremely sensitive assets and expensive equipment that you must secure to prevent significant losses.
What are the top security considerations for directors and producers?
Read about the top security tips for long-term film location facilities. This guide will cover the assets your security strategy must protect and cyber and physical security tips to secure your facility from security breaches – keeping your equipment, people, and intellectual property safe.
Why Must You Secure Your Filming Locations?
Securing your film locations has many benefits and can keep your sensitive data secure. On your filming locations, you have a duty of care to ensure that your staff members, hired contractors, and talent are safe. The film sets house expensive filming equipment required for the film’s production, which you must also secure to prevent losses.
Additionally, you must ensure that your intellectual property is secure to ensure no leaks. Leaks could have a significant impact on the profitability of your film once it is released, so privacy regarding your intellectual property is of the utmost importance.
This guide will cover some of the best practices and tips for securing your filming location to keep your people, data, and intellectual property secure.
Best Practices And Tips For Securing Your Filming Location
The success of your film, along with its profitability, is contingent upon securing your location from third parties and unauthorized users. Here are some of the best practices and tips for securing your filming location.
Basic Cybersecurity Training
A significant majority of cybersecurity events and incidents are caused by human error. This means that you would stand to benefit incrementally from providing your staff members, independent contractors, and talent with basic cybersecurity training. They will have access to sensitive information – such as scripts and rough edits of the film – that should not be accessible to third parties. So, to ensure your network is secured from third parties, you must provide your production crew with training on the following cybersecurity principles:
- Password creation – shockingly, many cybersecurity breaches are caused by weak passwords. By instructing your crew on the importance of creating strong passwords and some tips for password creation, you can reduce your risk of a security breach. You may also wish to instruct your crew to change their passwords regularly.
- Spotting phishing scams and malware – you must educate your team on the best practices for spotting phishing scams and the importance of keeping their personal information private.
- Performing software updates – when you perform cybersecurity software updates, you remove any vulnerabilities that the software providers detected in the older versions of the software. For this reason, you must instruct your crew members to perform software updates regularly on any devices they are using to access information on the film set.
Assess Your Current Security System
Performing risk assessments on your current security system will allow you to understand your current system’s vulnerabilities better. Some of the critical security system flaws and vulnerabilities you should address include:
- Your alarm systems – you must ensure that your alarm systems are in line with current codes and regulations. Emergency response procedures are essential for any building security strategy, stressing effective alarm systems.
- Your security cameras – by performing a security risk assessment, you will gain insight into critical vulnerabilities in your security camera system, such as any blind spots that an intruder could take advantage of.
- The risk of unauthorized access – sometimes, access control measures aren’t enough to remove the risk of an intruder entering your building. A security expert will advise you on whether you would benefit from identity verification measures, MFA, and biometrics to reduce the risk of unauthorized access to your film location.
Integrating Access Control And Video Surveillance At Your Studios
One of the critical vulnerabilities in a fob system is the potential for an unauthorized user to steal access credentials and gain access to your building.
The best course of action to remove this vulnerability is to integrate video surveillance with access control technology to provide easier identity verification. You can invest in video intercom access readers with built-in voice recognition, high-definition video, and touchless access control. With this technology, you can use three methods to verify user identity at your facility’s entrance.
Your security staff and system administrators will be able to view access logs alongside video feed information for a more user-friendly experience. Suppose you have a hybrid access control system or a cloud-based access system. In that case, your team will also be able to view this information from anywhere using a mobile application or cloud-based control center.
Using MFA And Biometrics To Secure Company Devices
Your company devices will hold sensitive information about the details of the film. To ensure your film’s success, you should seek to avoid the exposure of any information regarding the film’s plot and any raw footage of the movie from your studio. Using MFA and biometrics to secure company devices ensures that a leak does not spoil your film.
Biometrics ensures that only authorized users can access critical information, and multi-factor authentication requires multiple pieces of evidence to prove the user’s identity before they gain access to company devices. This technology is a worthy investment for any production company that wishes to keep its data secure.
Summary
Directors and producers need to focus on creating, filming, and editing the film – but they also must secure critical data on set. They also have a duty of care over their employees, hired contractors, and talent – ensuring their safety using building security and effective emergency evacuation procedures. Consider implementing these cybersecurity and physical security practices to ensure your long-term film location facilities are secured and protected.