Today, we came across a news article titled “Porn shock for tourists” – just from reading the title of the article you’re thinking – “what has this got to do with digital signage?”. There is a lesson to learn from this article so here is a copy of the article:
Computer pranksters in Croatia hacked into tourism board computers and downloaded blue movies onto a town centre information screen.
Red faced officials in Slavonski Brod managed to shut down the link but only after a cheering crowd had gathered around the screen, which normally gives cultural tips to visitors.
Police called in special IT crime experts to help track down the hackers.
Meanwhile the local council have pledged to splash out on a computer security upgrade to make sure nothing similar happens again.
Deputy mayor Zeljka Kristof said: “This is something we take very seriously because we have worked hard to give our town an image among tourists and visitors that we do not want sullied in any way.
“This incident shocked a lot of people and made our visitors feel very uncomfortable. It just proves our computer systems need to be made more secure.”
Source: http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_3074964.html
Like any other IT solution, digital signage needs to be secure – it needs to protect the solution from hackers and unauthorised access. In this case, the screen was hijacked and the tourist information was replaced with a porn video. We might have giggled when reading the article but it’s a serious issue if it happened to us *Not many parents would have been impressed if their children were there*. The consequences could have been more devastating – the screen could have been used to display sensitive information.
Like the Internet, digital signage solutions have many vulnerabilities and security holes and it is the responsibility of the network operators to ensure the solution is secure.
We also previously talked about ways to mitigate various security issues in our previous post called “How Secure Is Your Digital Signage Solution?“. Here’s the link if you’re interested to read further.
Lesson learnt: make sure your digital signage solution is secure before you have the public looking at your screen!!!
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