A scant 1 percent of U.S. media companies said they are very confident they can withstand various security threats, according to a research report that profiled the diverse range of attacks that target the sector.

In “The State of Media Security,” Akamai commissioned BizTechInsights to survey approximately 200 professionals. More than a quarter (26 percent) of these respondents said they are worried about media security issues such as downtime or slow site performance that can threaten their efforts to build business online and through over-the-top (OTT) content.

Stop the Presses

Twenty-three percent of those surveyed said they are particularly concerned about safeguarding their premium video content. Other media security worries covered in the report include protecting enterprise applications (20 percent) and the rise of traffic from bots (15 percent). Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks came in slightly lower at 13 percent.

Perhaps due to their large audiences and influence, media companies said they are being attacked in a variety of ways. According to the report, 23 percent of respondents cited SQL injections as the most frequent attack type, followed by Domain Name Server (DNS) attacks at 21 percent, pirated content at 20 percent and DDoS at 17 percent.

Defending Against Media Security Threats

While media companies are taking action, the survey suggested that it’s an uphill battle. Although premium video represents one of the sector’s most lucrative growth areas, for example, 34 percent said that encryption was a challenge and 25 percent said it was difficult to prevent users from sharing links. Digital rights management was also a common pain point, cited by 24 percent of respondents.

Though it might not solve all their security challenges, the study showed that media companies can do better by adopting more standard technologies to defend themselves, including cloud-based content delivery network (CDN) DDoS mitigation, which is deployed by only 14 percent of respondents. Additionally, 31 percent said they are using network firewalls to fend off attacks on online videos.

While the vast majority of media companies are not confident in their security defenses, they are making strides to protect their assets. However, the report noted that “media organizations need to take measures to protect their entire online business, not just their video streams.” An all-encompassing security program is the only way to limit the risk of cyberthreats.