What’s the Hurry?

Happy new year….and what an exciting year it’s going to be!

Over the last three quarters, we carefully planned and executed a sequence of milestones that have paved the way for the launch of a refreshed, more comprehensive TPN program scheduled to go live the week of February 6th 2023.

In June 2022, we published streamlined TPN assessor accreditation criteria with a subsequent press release in August announcing the upcoming launch of our new TPN+ platform. In October, we unveiled a new TPN membership model, which was swiftly followed by the publication of an updated and reformatted MPA Content Security Best Practices v5.0 to include Application and Cloud content security.

Today, we’re excited to be just a month away from launch and an expanded and improved service for our stakeholders that includes matrixed service provider profiles and registry featuring services, sites and applications, multi-level Blue and Gold TPN Shield statuses and reporting of non-TPN security certificates.  We’ve also updated the TPN questionnaire and assessment to include Application and Cloud in addition to the existing Site and WFH.

By anyone’s standards we have been moving very fast, but why are we in such a hurry?

Plato famously wrote, “our need will be the real creator.” The  2011 Japan tsunami accelerated the migration from tape to file; the 2014 Sony Pictures hack raised security standards throughout the industry  and now, Covid  has accelerated the migration to the Cloud. Covid was, however, a terrible paradox in that we had to move and act fast for issues such as the shift to remote work and cloud migration, but in other ways we were paralyzed as production and other in-process developments ground to a halt. Creation of standardized Application and Cloud security standards were one of those casualties. As the industry started to recover, it was clear that, although TPN had introduced remote assessments instead of just on-site and included WFH best practices to address Covid, TPN site/location assessments alone were no longer enough in light of the massive uptake of Cloud solutions.

Because of the accelerated migration to Cloud, Content Owners responsible for safeguarding their content had no choice but to start doing their own application and cloud assessments. This meant a step back to pre-TPN centralization for many Service Providers and content security status once again became fractured, increasing duplicative work.

In the first quarter of 2022, it was clear that we had to move quickly, but with so many global stakeholders, high-value content, and various dependencies at stake, we also needed to be thoughtful, thorough and organized in our approach. We needed to take a broad view of the community we were serving and tackle big-picture issues related to content security by being more inclusive, simplifying processes, creating transparency and introducing flexibility whenever possible.

We also knew that by developing a new platform on which to manage the TPN program, we had a window of opportunity to rapidly address other significant issues such as the speed with which Content Owners needed to make their own independent risk-based decisions regarding vendor partner selection. Also critical was the ability for Service Providers to report pre-existing non-TPN security certifications and manage and communicate security status across an entire product family and technology stack versus a single location. In addition, we needed to create a more user-friendly and streamlined experience by removing superfluous administrative layers and giving Service Providers the ability to self-manage as much of their own information as possible.

For TPN to succeed going forward, we must provide value to all stakeholders. To do this, we must listen to the voices of our global stakeholders in addition to those from Hollywood. We have consequently sought and received feedback from multiple International Content Owners and have also worked closely with our Assessor partners around the world to gather their views and input. We have invested significant time in gathering thoughts, requirements and suggestions from global Service Providers who provide capabilities, including software applications, from script to screen at various information sessions, webinars, and individual meetings. For every update to the TPN program and new capability or process, we have considered multiple perspectives every step of the way, including the updated MPA Best Practices v5.0, the new TPN membership model and the new functionality provided by TPN+, our new platform.

We will launch the new TPN program for onsite, remote work, application and cloud TPN assessments on February 6, 2023. We currently have a large and growing list of early adopter TPN Service Provider members who have signed up before launch to signal their support of the new program and to be able to start their new or renewal TPN assessments as soon as we launch. The Content Owners, including the MPA Studio members — Netflix Studios; Paramount Pictures; Sony Pictures Entertainment; Universal City Studios; Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures; and Warner Bros. Discovery — and their multiple subsidiaries, plus Amazon Studios, BBC Studios, and others, are engaged and eagerly looking forward to the updated TPN program.

It really is an exciting time, and this is just the beginning. There is so much more that the TPN program can do to support and evolve content security across the industry. We have designed the refreshed TPN so that it is flexible and modular, enabling it to keep pace with advancing technology, organizational restructuring, M&A activity and the continuous improvement that we will be driving, with your help, on an ongoing basis.

We need to keep evolving and improving, and we need to do so with the voice of our global stakeholders at the forefront of our decision-making. We are excited to launch and will shortly be putting several feedback methods in place to continue gathering your comments. In the meantime, please do not hesitate to contact us at membership@ttpn.org to share your thoughts and ideas.

We will be at HPA and NAB and very much look forward to seeing you there. Feel free to reach out if you wish to schedule a meeting.

On behalf of the entire TPN team, we wish you a happy, healthy and successful new year.