This article is written by Benjamin Pius (Publisher @ BMA) as part of the forthcoming Broadcasters Convention – East Africa, 26–28 May 2026, Nairobi, Kenya. Register and view the full programme →
In December 2024, Telecom Namibia was hit by ransomware. The attackers — a group called Hunters International — exfiltrated 626 gigabytes of data. When the company refused to pay, it leaked billing records, customer contracts, internal budget reports, and the personal information of senior government officials, publishing them on social media for all to see. Within weeks, Cell C in South Africa had been breached by RansomHouse.
These are telecoms companies, not broadcasters. But the infrastructure they run — the connectivity pipelines over which African audiences consume content — is identical in its vulnerability to broadcast infrastructure. And the lesson is the same: when an operator that audiences depend on goes dark, it is not just a technology failure. It is a trust failure. For broadcasters, the stakes are sharpened further by one non-negotiable requirement: the broadcast must go on.
For broadcasters specifically, the threat surface has widened dramatically as distribution has moved from single satellite feeds to hybrid multi-platform ecosystems — cloud playout, OTT delivery, mobile streaming, linear broadcast — each of which represents a potential point of failure. A ransomware attack that encrypts a playout server at 7:58 pm on a live match night is not an IT problem. It is an audience problem, an advertiser problem, and a reputational problem that no post-incident statement will fully repair.
The regulatory environment is tightening fast. The business case for compliance, however, goes beyond avoiding fines. Put plainly: a broadcaster that cannot demonstrate infrastructure security will find it harder to acquire content, attract advertisers, and access capital.
So, for broadcast executives, the priorities are clear: build redundancy into every distribution layer; adopt hybrid cloud-satellite workflows that allow seamless failover when primary delivery paths are compromised; align infrastructure standards with ISO 22301 or equivalent frameworks; and treat breach reporting timelines not as compliance deadlines but as the floor of a much higher standard.
The broadcasters who will define this industry over the next decade are those who treat uptime as a promise—and build the infrastructure to keep it.
This article is written by Benjamin Pius (Publisher @ BMA) as part of the forthcoming Broadcasters Convention – East Africa, 26–28 May 2026, Nairobi, Kenya. Register and view the full programme →
