Report: Content security inseparable from overall cybersecurity
April 28, 2026
By Nik Roseveare
The Trusted Partner Network (TPN), the content security initiative powered by the Motion Picture Association (MPA), has released the TPN STAR Report, which analyses large-scale security assessment data and track how cyber risks are evolving across the global content supply chain.
The TPN STAR Report data shows that while most organisations have foundational policies in place, inconsistent day-to-day- execution of technical controls is creating systemic and exploitable risk. By analysing validated TPN security assessments alongside incident-driven Security Alerts, the report shows a pattern of control failures that closely match real-world attacks.
“Content security today is inseparable from overall cybersecurity,” commenyed Karyn Temple, Senior Executive Vice President and Global General Counsel for the MPA. “Protecting intellectual property at scale requires the same rigor, operational discipline, and vigilance demanded in other critical, high-risk sectors.”
According to the report, in the first quarter of 2026, TPN issued more Security Alerts than in all of 2025, reflecting a sharp increase in credential-based attacks, misconfigurations and exploitation of un-remediated vulnerabilities. While TPN provides the platform and standards for assessing security, fixing any issues is the responsibility of the organisations being assessed.
Recent security alerts consistently pointed to the same underlying technical weaknesses, including:
· Compromised credentials
· Inconsistent multi-factor authentication (MFA)
· Insecure system and cloud configurations
· Delays in patching and vulnerability remediation
TPN STAR Report data reinforces this pattern with vulnerability management, cryptography, endpoint hardening and access management emerging as the weakest-performing controls areas showing:
· The highest rates of non-compliance
· Frequent remediation refusals or deferrals
· The slowest remediation timelines
“The TPN STAR Report highlights a persistent disconnect between perceived security and actual operational performance,” said Terri Davies, President of TPN. “Organisations routinely overestimate that their controls are effective, especially those that require continuous attention, technical rigour, and operational ownership. Recent technological advances only heighten the urgency to address these gaps before they are exploited.”
Capabilities such as Zero Trust architectures, conditional access, continuous authentication, and automated compliance monitoring are not yet widely used across the entertainment ecosystem. In highly distributed production environments spanning cloud platforms, remote workforces, and a complex ecosystem of third-party vendors, these gaps can greatly increase the impact of a single compromised credential.
In response to these findings, the report underscores the need for urgent industry action to ensure continuous monitoring of systems and access, faster remediation of known vulnerabilities, stronger ownership of operational controls, and consistent enforcement of identity and access protections, particularly across third-party environments.