Paris 2024: Organisers Prepare To Tackle Cybersecurity Challenge Ahead
The organisers of Paris 2024 Olympic Games are preparing to tackle an unprecedented cybersecurity challenge as they foresee substantial pressure on the Games this summer.
Organised crime, activists, and states are identified as the primary threats during the Olympics from July 26 to August 11 and the Paralympics from August 28 to September 8.
Paris 2024, collaborating closely with the French National Agency for Information Security (ANSSI) and cybersecurity firms Cisco and Eviden, aims to mitigate the impact of cyberattacks.
“We can’t prevent all the attacks, there will not be Games without attacks but we have to limit their impacts on the Olympics,” Vincent Strubel, the director general of ANSSI, told reporters.
“There are 500 sites, competition venues and local collectives, and we’ve tested them all.”
Strubel is confident that Paris 2024, which will operate from a cybersecurity operation centre in a location that is being kept secret will be ready.
“The Games are facing an unprecedented level of threat, but we’ve also done an unprecedented amount of preparation work so I think we’re a step ahead of the attackers,” he said.
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To ensure their participation, Paris 2024 has employed ‘ethical hackers’ to stress-test their systems and has been using artificial intelligence to help them do a triage of the threats.
“AI helps us make the difference between a nuisance and a catastrophe,” said Franz Regul, managing director for IT at Paris 2024.
“We’re expecting the number of cyber security events to be multiplied by 10 compared to Tokyo (in 2021).”
“In terms of cybersecurity, four years is the equivalent of a century,” Eric Greffier, head of partnerships at CISCO, explained.
In 2018, an attack targeting the opening ceremony of the Pyeongchang Winter Games utilized a computer virus known as ‘Olympic Destroyer.’
Although Moscow denied any involvement, the U.S. Justice Department indicted six hackers from Russian intelligence agencies in 2020 for a hacking campaign spanning four years, which included assaults on the Pyeongchang Games.
“We would like to have one opponent but we’re looking into everything and everyone. Naming the potential attackers is not our role, it is the role of the state,” Strubel said.
Last month, French President Emmanuel Macron expressed certainty that Russia would maliciously target the Paris Olympics.
The Games will occur against a complex global backdrop, which includes Russia’s conflict in Ukraine and Israel’s ongoing conflict with Hamas, designated as a terrorist organization by both the United States and the European Union.
