IBC 2026 Preview: Production networks push resilience and security to the forefront

IBC 2026 will take place Sept. 11-14 in Amsterdam, bringing together exhibitors, visitors and speakers from more than 170 countries.

Among the themes expected to draw attention this year is the resilience and trustworthiness of production systems as they become increasingly connected and software-driven.

As broadcast workflows shift toward IP-based transport, cloud platforms and distributed infrastructure, industry executives said the topics of cybersecurity, system reliability, content authenticity, disaster recovery and operational continuity are drawing closer scrutiny from buyers.

Resilience at the network layer

Executives pointed to the handoffs between facilities, networks, cloud platforms and partner organizations as a persistent source of operational risk.

“As workflows span more facilities, networks, cloud platforms and partner organizations, the highest operational risk is often at the handoffs where responsibility and visibility are divided,” said Andreas Eriksson, chief executive of Net Insight. “Resilience therefore means more than redundant devices: it requires secure, media-aware boundaries, end-to-end service insight and predictable behavior through congestion, failover and peak events.”

Eriksson said buyers should ask how quickly an architecture can identify, isolate and recover from a cross-domain problem while keeping a live service on air.

Peder Boberg, product owner at Intinor, said resilience needs to be built into the network layer itself as live workflows move from traditional fiber to IP transport over unmanaged networks.

“True operational redundancy comes from sending duplicate video streams over independent internet paths using open, compliant protocols,” Boberg said. “If one network path experiences severe packet loss, the receiving hardware uses the secondary stream to reconstruct lost data seamlessly without interrupting the live broadcast.”

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Authentication and zero-trust access

As production data moves across a wider range of systems and locations, several executives said authentication practices have not always kept pace with the shift.

Duncan Beattie, senior market development manager for enterprise at Tuxera, said security can no longer stop at the edge of a facility. He pointed to authentication as an area that still needs attention.

“Technologies such as NTLM remain common in production environments, even though they were designed for a very different security environment,” Beattie said. “Moving toward certificate-based authentication and continuous transport encryption can strengthen security without making everyday work more complicated for production teams.”

William Viker, chief technology officer at Bitfocus, said the temporary and changing nature of production environments makes broadcast security a distinct challenge.

“Broadcast security is difficult because the system being protected may be different tomorrow, with new users, rented equipment and remote connections added for the next production,” Viker said. “Zero-trust principles, network segmentation and strong authentication all matter, but they must be applied without slowing down the people trying to get a programme on air.”

Viker said the goal is not to lock production down but to build systems that remain secure, understandable and operational when something changes or goes wrong.

Sergio Ammirata, chief scientist at SipRadius, said organizations often narrow their view of what needs protecting.

“The biggest security mistake in IP production is treating the video stream as the whole attack surface,” Ammirata said. “Control ports, intercom, messaging, documents, user credentials, software updates and physically accessible edge devices can all expose a production if they sit outside the same security model.”

Ammirata said media organizations should require end-to-end encryption, zero-trust access, auditable device security and a clear accounting of every point where content is decrypted, stored or exposed.

Miroslav Jeras, chief technology officer at Pebble, said resilience and security need to be part of a system’s initial design rather than added afterward.

“An exciting architecture should immediately raise two questions: is it resilient, and is it secure?” Jeras said. “These are not qualities you bolt on later. They need to be designed into the architecture from the outset.”

Jeras said modern distributed, software-defined media systems can offer greater flexibility and resilience, but only when redundancy, failover, recovery and secure access are built in from the start. He said he would be cautious of any promise of flexibility not backed by clear answers on failover, permissions and network outages.

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Governance, AI and data sovereignty

Several executives connected the growth of artificial intelligence tools in production to broader questions about governance and data control.

Aaron Kroger, director of product marketing at Dalet, said the value organizations get from AI depends on their level of trust in it.

“AI can only create value if organizations trust it with their most valuable assets and workflows,” Kroger said. “At IBC 2026, the focus will increasingly be on architectures that balance powerful automation with strong governance, security and control over how media content is accessed and used.”

Graham Sharp, vice president of sales and marketing at BCNEXXT, said data sovereignty, operational control and cloud portability are becoming critical considerations for European media organizations.

“Many server-based applications have utilized proprietary tools provided by a single cloud vendor to accelerate the move into their cloud, locking them into one overseas cloud vendor, limiting flexibility and raising questions around cost, control and jurisdiction,” Sharp said. “Due to data protection rules European media organizations need the freedom to choose where their content resides, who controls it and how easily it can be moved to alternative infrastructure.”

Content authenticity and piracy protection

Content protection and provenance were also cited as areas of focus heading into the show.

Sarah Hackforth, international sales director at Big Blue Marble, said protecting premium content increasingly requires linking detection to enforcement as piracy methods grow more sophisticated.

“AI can correlate behavioral data across DRM, concurrent access protection and forensic watermarking to identify credential sharing and redistribution patterns that may be missed when each protection layer operates independently,” Hackforth said.

Hackforth said forensic watermarking can help trace an illegal stream to the originating subscriber or session, giving operators information to take faster and more targeted action.

She said broadcasters are also paying closer attention to the origin and integrity of the media they distribute, pointing to Content Credentials based on the C2PA standard as a tool for verifying provenance and tracking how content has been modified throughout its lifecycle.

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