Safeguard Your Show’s Data with These Security Tips: Part II

SetKeeper
4 min readJul 21, 2021

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By Nik Bars, Emily Winters and Hugo Cordier

Photo by Abdullah Aydin on Unsplash

All good adventure stories can’t be told in one installment, and neither can our essential security tips! We shared our best advice on tech security for your production in Part 1. Read on to discover the thrilling sequel tips to keep your production iron-clad!

Consult the oracle — use a password manager

The oracle can see and warn about future events, but it doesn’t take a psychic to know that trying to keep dozens of passwords to individual accounts memorized is a recipe for disaster. You can’t write them down (the hackers!) and you can’t use the same one each time (because of the hackers!). What to do?

Invest in a password manager like 1Password, Keeper or Dashlane. They automatically generate ultra secure passwords for each of your login credentials and store them safely encrypted. All you have to do is remember one password to login to the service — the app will do the rest for you!

Set up the world’s simplest booby trap and enable Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)

Courageous knights always need to keep their wits about them when exploring castles, caves, and enchanted forests. Who knows what traps could be lurking?

Set a booby trap of your own and enable two-factor authentication on as many of your accounts as you can. While it might reduce convenience (as you wait for the code to arrive in your inbox), it’s extremely effective. 2FA is the inner wall of your fortress of data; if someone breaks your initial line of defense, they need to break your second wall to actually get to your information. The more barriers you can put between you and your data, the safer it will be.

“King’s Fanfare” by MTSOfan is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Sound the trumpets! — Use a dedicated distribution platform to share information

Sound was a simple and effective method of communication across vast distances during medieval times. But imagine the confusion if they sounded their warning trumpets, battle drums, and celebratory fanfare all at once!

Not only does a single distribution platform reduce confusion for you and your crew — it also increases the safety of your production as well. A distribution platform grants you the ability to add additional safeguards to the information you’re sharing with your colleagues. Security measures like watermarking, password protection, sharing documents as links with expiration dates and PDF-download prevention are at your disposal to protect your information.

And, with a dedicated platform it is much easier to follow the Principle of Least Privilege (see Part I for a refresher). In SetKeeper you have the option to send protected documents to recipients who don’t need to access the app, or you can send them as closed-loop links that require users to have a SetKeeper account. If you do want to have many users on the app, you can restrict user access rights to individual folders, documents or modules within the platform for only those who need access to them.

If you’re working with a particular studio and need to adhere to particular protocols, SetKeeper can also enforce what the studio requires — from password protection to 2FA and beyond.

Preserve your security legacy and educate everyone else to take these same steps!

Scholars and wise men through the ages have advised leaders on the best course of action. Make sure you follow in their footsteps and spread the word about data security practices! If you want to keep your production secure, everyone must be educated about your data security protocols.

At the beginning of your production and each time you hire someone new, hold a training session to discuss security protocols for the production. If one person uses a weak password that is compromised, prints out a script that gets lost, or sends a document to the wrong place with the wrong security measures, it can jeopardize your entire production — not to mention your future productions.

We hope that these tips will help you bolster the security of not just your upcoming shows, but also the security of all your personal data. It can be scary to think about how much of your personal and production’s data could be out there ready to be compromised, but if you take the time to work these suggestions in, the little extra effort we are confident will put you at ease!

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Have comments or ideas for other articles? Feel free to reach out to contact@setkeeper.com and let us know what you think!

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SetKeeper

SetKeeper is an industry-leading platform designed to coordinate the physical production process simply and safely. www.setkeeper.com