M+E Connections

In today’s fast-paced, high-stakes world, productions can’t afford to lose any raw footage, rough cuts or finished material before the final product is in the can.

However, the media and entertainment industry is at increased risk for many reasons.

First, few industries store as much data as M&E given the sheer amount of video being produced at higher definitions and around-the-clock productions being kept on track. Second, most productions employ many people and contractors, have highly coveted digital assets being stored, and large budgets.

All these factors make M&E ripe for theft, human error, and the steadily rising ransomware attacks we’ve seen in the industry, with notable examples.

You may have heard that the production team of Toy Story 2 almost lost the entirety of their movie footage due to accidental deletion, or the ransomware attacks suffered by Sony, Netflix, and countless others. Even broadcasters can face serious legal and financial consequences — in the tens of millions — if a data breach occurs.

All of this highlights the importance of having a resilient data storage and backup strategy.

However, storing files on-premises can be limiting in terms of storage capacity and cost as well as time-consuming for companies to maintain and manage. M&E firms need a fail-safe backup strategy that ensures they can rapidly retrieve media work when things go wrong, effectively recover from attacks, and protect the property, and the bottom line.

To manage their data in a scalable and efficient manner, M&E companies should consider moving away from the traditional on-premise approach and toward the cloud — or multiple clouds.

A multi-cloud approach combines public and private clouds to help minimize expenses, avoid vendor lock-in, protect their valuable content, and optimize performance and operations.

Here’s how.

DIVERSIFYING BACKUPS

As part of a disaster recovery plan, M&E orgs can make themselves more resilient by having multiple backups of their content and data in the cloud.

This often comes in the form of the “3-2-1” backup strategy which ensures that organizations keep three copies of data, with two on different media formats, and one of those being off-site.

Immutable storage — in which data cannot be altered or deleted by anyone for a set period — is becoming a necessity as well but adds a critical layer of protection for valuable data.

By backing up content to the cloud, M&E companies diversify their backups and avoid a centralized “all eggs in one basket” content hub that makes it easier for a disaster to wipe out everything in one go.

This ultimately helps mitigate the cost of a breach and helps companies continue to function during a data loss event, quickly retrieve footage and archives, and reduce downtime.

RECOVERING LOST DATA

In the event of a ransomware attack, organizations that have their data backed up to the cloud can quickly eliminate ransomware by clearing its slate then restore and recover its data with minimal downtime.

The cloud allows for simplified recovering testing by granting organizations easy access to their data, giving IT teams time to prepare and get critical intel into their security measures.

Teams can quickly retrieve footage and archives should they lose any.

MAKING THE MOST OF REMOTE WORK

Content and footage are shot all over the world, and as a result, there’s likely an increasing need to transfer and store data at different locations to ensure it is rapidly accessible to everyone on the team working from home or on location.

In this situation, storing data in the cloud is critical.

While it is important for organizations to have the ability to store data locally, it can be very expensive and inconvenient to open multiple on-premises data centers in different locations.

Moving data to the cloud enables organizations to run multitudes of data centers around the world due to its scale.

The best way to implement a successful cloud backup approach is to explore and consult multiple cloud options before making your selections to find the best fit for your needs.

As the cloud industry has expanded, there are sever- al storage provider options outside of the big-name players.

This also means that there is greater diversity in what cloud vendors have to offer in terms of IT service packages.

Take the time upfront to thoroughly vet your options and determine which provider offers the best mix of performance and cost to fit your specific needs.

Doing so will not only protect your budget but give you the peace of mind that your valuable content and production information is safe, secure, and always available to you when you need it.

* By Whit Jackson, Vice President, Media, Entertainment, Wasabi Technologies *

=============================================

Click here to download the complete .PDF version of this article
Click here to download the entire Winter 2022 M&E Journal