Off-site operations can increase the risk to your cyber safety, and the Society of Broadcast Engineers wants to help stations protect their equipment, particularly emergency alerting gear.
It has published an article by Larry Wilkins, the chair of the SBE EAS Advisory Group, to help engineers fend off such hacking before it happens.
For instance, he writes, “Although it is tempting to place the EAS equipment on an outside static IP address, this gives an open door to those wishing to do harm. If you don’t have an IT staff or someone who understands IT systems, you might ask, ‘How can I check to see if my EAS device is directly accessible from the Internet?’” Wilkins goes on to explain.
He also covers software updates including FCC compliance updates, security patches and bug/functional updates.
Wilkins, who retired from Cumulus Media in 2007, writes the technical newsletter for the Alabama Broadcasters Association and has been active in EAS, Amber Alerts and Alternative Broadcast Inspection Program; he is a past recipient of the Radio World Excellence in Engineering Award.
