Security is one of the major concerns surrounding the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and not only physical security. Information and communications technology providers interviewed by RCR Wireless News for a special Olympics series (check all stories here) put cybersecurity at the top of their list of concerns and are working to mitigate risks and avoid attacks.
Since the start of test events on July 25, the Technology Operations Centre has managed and monitored the technology infrastructure and systems. These include information technology security, telecommunications, power and the event timing systems. TOC controls and commands all technology deployed in 144 Olympic competition and noncompetition venues.
According to the CIO of the Rio Olympics Elly Resende, the TOC is crucial to running the games and ensuring that the results are delivered accurately, securely and in real time to the world. “Since we began monitoring we have found millions of incidents, but we had zero problems,” he said during a press visit to TOC. “Security is a topic that we must always pay attention to, and never be arrogant.”
During the final technical rehearsal, the worldwide IT partner of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, Atos, came up against nearly 1,000 predefined operational scenarios, including a flood, network disconnection, power failures, changes to the competition schedule and security attacks, across the 22 Olympic venues. According to the company, the team and system were assessed during the technical rehearsal by how they responded to each circumstance, allowing and enabling to test, create, and tweak full responses to nearly any situation for the upcoming Games.
In an interview with RCR Wireless News, Shailesh Chauhan, security IT manager from Atos South America, said the IT security risks are among the top topics of concern. “We look at all potential threats in order to mitigate them and to do architecture design.”
He noted Atos works with multivendor technologies to ensure it engages all security levels, looking at not only the perimeter, but also customers’ access, applications and data.
“We got the latest [intrusion prevention systems] and [intrusion detection system] services from Cisco. We are using firewalls to inspect traffic from very low and very high layers and we are looking at the system itself by adopting best practices and good standards,” he noted.
Expected cybersecurity attacks
Chauhan said the zero-day attacks are the most challenging. “If you think about servers at the internet, there are many hackers trying to break the system. We need to be monitoring systems to identify attacks immediately,” the security IT manager added. Denial-of-service and distributed denial-of-service attacks are likely to happen, said Rodrigo Uchoa, director of new business and Rio 2016 project coordinator at Cisco.
Symantec is also a supplier and will provide security software including endpoint security, data loss prevention and mobile security management, among others. Symantec will have 15 professionals who will work in partnership with colleagues from its security technology and response division to work on monitoring threats and malicious attacks.
In the case of América Móvil’s role, the carrier’s head for Rio 2016, Luciano Carino, explained that two servers control users’ authentication in the network to make sure only those involved in the Games can access the respective areas of interest.
Even those which are not official sponsors or suppliers should be prepared for increased risk during the Games. Brazilian carrier Oi said it adopted security best practices aimed at protecting its network from attacks.
“We had developed a prevention plan involving monitoring and responding, noted Oi’s director Andre Luis Ituassú. “We have teams specialized in cybersecurity, computer forensics and incident response.” He added that for all major events held in Brazil, Oi has had dedicated teams to take care of the telecom infrastructure’s security.
Click here for more stories about the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Editor’s note: This story is part of a series focused on the technology deployments that support the Rio Olympics.
