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Studio Security Newsletter

Dan Daley, editor

Issue #6 — December, 2000

Virtual Crooks

Disappearing microphones are a plague on the studio business. But while the theft of physical items tends to be the main focus of crime prevention in this business, there are other aspects that need attention. Studios have been using the Internet for advertising and marketing for some time now; more recently, they've added services such as on-line recording via such services as Rocket Network, and an increasing number of facilities now accept credit card payments via the 'Net.

Here are a few sobering statistics that should remind us to keep our back-office portals as secure as our front doors:
• 90% of corporations and government agencies said they had detected security breaches in their IT systems.
• Internet security analysts estimate that $265.6 million was lost last year due to computer crimes. Meanwhile, companies spend an average of 0.1% of their revenues on information security.
• 3.9 million files were infected by by viruses last year.
• America Online reported 147,000 passwords stolen by hackers -- in one month alone this year.

Don't give out studio passwords, or personal passwords. Be particularly careful with the security of access passwords to new Internet-based recording sites: losing data from one of those is the equivalent of misplacing the two-inch tape after a session. Also, there's a subculture developing that thinks it's cool to try to find Sting's bass part in the ether.

Use a reputable on-line credit collection company with a high level of encryption capability, and get your guarantee against on-line credit card fraud from them in writing.

Next edition: more on preventing computer crime.

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