Security alerts recorded at Olympic Games

More than five million security alerts were recorded during 16 days of Olympic competition, according to Atos Origin, the company managing the Games' IT.

While there were no proven attacks on the network during the event, Atos Origin did observe some abnormal behaviour.

Just over 400 alerts were classed as serious - and 20 of these alerts were viewed as critical.

Some of the IT infrastructure was set in an open environment.

And Patrick Adiba, vice president of major events for Atos Origin, said the company couldn't relate these events to a person, only to a particular piece of hardware at a particular moment.

'We believe some of the events we saw, such as people logging-in on the wrong computer at the wrong time, may have been related [to an attack],' he said.

'We knew which computer had behaviour that was not considered as normal, but we didn't know who was on the other side of the keyboard.'

Intrusions included accredited people attempting to disconnect INFO 2004, the Olympic Games intranet that provides results, schedule and athlete information.

The IT team was able to respond quickly to all the critical alerts and prevent unauthorised access.

Atos Origin focused on three areas during its preparation for the Games: security architecture, risk management and operations.

This strategy helped the company ensure it could respond to any potential threat from inside or outside of the network.

For more on Atos Origin's experiences of running the Olympic Games IT, click here now.

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