M+E Europe

CPS 2022: CDSA Searching for Industry ‘Gaps’ Where Working Groups Can Help

The Content Delivery & Security Association (CDSA) provided an update on what its various working groups are focused on now and why during a CDSA Working Groups Panel session at its Content Protection Summit (CPS) Dec. 6.

“We just wanted to make sure that everybody was aware of what are all the working groups that we have as part of CDSA and what are the additional working groups that we believe we’re adding this next year,” said Richard Atkinson, CDSA president.

CDSA has a few principles, “which I think make us somewhat unique, at least as a group,” he told attendees. “We’re all about community, community, community.” And part of that community is all about getting together both physically and virtually to work, he added.

“We’re about addressing gaps, meaning if we see a gap we have something where we can help, we think, as CDSA, we can step in with our members,” he explained.  “We should address gaps. But, at the very same time, if a gap is filled somewhere or there isn’t a gap, let’s not do it. There is no need. So there’s no reason that there should be duplication out there.”

Meanwhile, “we think leadership is key in this industry,” he said. “We really believe that there’s a need as an association, as membership, as a community to just be all about just putting things together: people, associations, teams, companies, solutions, but just be the glue” that holds it all together, he added.

“Hopefully you see it from us and demonstrating is, you know, security is serious stuff. Let’s try to find a way to make light and have a bit of fun. So that’s something that we’re trying to do, throughout this always.”

There are “four values that CDSA provides,” which starts with community, followed by working groups and events and “then sometimes there’s a need to put a vision out there,” he explained.

“We wanted to focus this session specifically on working groups,” he noted.

Atkinson pointed out he leads an account management enforcement working group that “spans a lot of things but enforcement is part of it; it’s really focused on how do we identify bad guys and what do we do about it and how does it all fit and it’s very, very broad,” he said. After all, he said: “Bad guys can be a whole bunch of different things.”

There is also a “copyright licensing working group” that he said is “doing really great work to kind of tighten up the whole consumer product side of marketing products for media.”

“Production security was an active working group about a year ago,” he recalled. “Then there were a number of changes amongst the folks in the industry [and it] got a little bit stalled and now we’re reconstituting it and it’s “active again.” Ben’s stepping in kind of saying, ‘OK, let’s get it grounded, focused, moving,” he said, referring to Ben Schofield, CDSA technical director.

There is also a customer conversion working group” that’s something “I have been talking about … launching” but haven’t yet, Atkinson went on to say. But “I’m going to do it in January,” he said.

“So that’s what the current picture looks like at the moment and then, out of our planning work and other requests from members, we are trying to be responsive and add some more” working groups, he told attendees. “One of the hot topics that came up was production crew ID working group,” he said.

In response, Schofield said 90% of production work is “outsourced to small companies, to productions, to independent crew…. Although the studios are commissioning that they don’t have such a strong influence as to what’s going on inside those productions ….We’re looking here at trying to get some of those foundational pieces so we can influence the security posture within those groups. But it’s kind of reducing friction and driving adoption of the two things we’re trying to do there.”

To download the presentation, click here.

To view the entire session, click here.

Presented by Fortinet and produced by MESA, CDSA’s Content Protection Summit is sponsored by Convergent Risks, Richey May Technology Solutions, GeoComply, Signiant, Verimatrix, Shift Media, EIDR and EZDRM.