Fourth Annual Media Barometer | Media Challenged By Cyber risks in the digital world

Deeply involved in the Media industry and determined to provide Industry Executives with a better overview of the trends and challenges impacting the sector, Mazars has published a media barometer since 2011 analyzing the financial performance and the risk factors disclosed on the annual reports of the 100 largest publicly-listed media companies in North America and Europe.

In order to dig deeper and offer better insights to decision makers on the tools and technics enabling them to successfully handle the issues posed by the industry, the Mazars Media Barometer has taken a new turn. Throughout the year, our experts will present, provide commentary and analyze the biggest industry challenges while lifting the veil on the key directions for better addressing these topics. Mazars is pleased to release its first report devoted to a topic largely covered by the press this year: the risk of Cyber Security.

"Many people, even top-level management, don’t include cyber security in their ERM. They don’t include it because they don’t see where it fits in the traditional structure."

Nicolas Quairel, Partner and Head of IT Consulting at Mazars in the UK.

For several years, the media industry has been disrupted by new internet-based business models, media content digitalization, and the need to enable content to be used on different platforms. As part of this transition, data security has become a major challenge for media companies. Loss of data can present a very real threat to the continuity of their operations and cause long-term damage to a company’s reputation.

According to our analysis, the risk related to cybersecurity is now reported by 71% of the 100 largest publicly-listed media companies in North America and Europe, representing an evolution of 9% over the three year period 2012-2014, highlighting the importance of this threat.

This special edition issued by Mazars on cyber security is based on the contributions of our IT experts in Europe and in the US, offering guidelines to help Industry players to protect their activities against cyber-incidents. In the same vein as the previous editions, a comparison has been made between the US and Europe, identifying the differences on regulatory framework for cyber-attacks.