News organizations have grown increasingly reliant on large file transfer systems for time-sensitive media operations, regularly managing multi-gigabyte video content through enterprise platforms like MediaShuttle, Aspera, and Microsoft FTP Server while working against tight editorial deadlines. This digital shift in journalism workflows appears to have left media infrastructures vulnerable to sophisticated cyber attacks. Threat actors seem particularly drawn to exploiting file transfer weaknesses as a pathway to sensitive content and newsroom disruption, which became starkly evident during the 2023 MOVEit breach that impacted the BBC. Yet current threat modeling frameworks, built primarily for general enterprise settings, may not adequately capture the distinct operational pressures and security needs that define newsroom file transfer environments. This study is the first to apply the STRIDE threat modeling framework to journalism file transfer systems. The new framework combines STRIDE with Zero Trust principles to address security risks in editorial workflows. Through validation across case studies involving three varied news organizations, the framework demonstrated what appears to be a 40% enhancement in threat identification capabilities and uncovered 23 previously overlooked vulnerabilities. This research offers systematic methods for securing file transfer operations without compromising editorial workflow efficiency. It provides theoretical groundwork for journalism cybersecurity research while delivering practical implementation guidance that media organizations can actually use.
