Protecting the games

The French government’s national cybersecurity agency, Agence national de la sécurité des systèmes d’information (ANSSI), is overseeing the monumental effort to keep the Paris Olympics cyber safe. Since mid-2023 it has held several awareness-raising seminars and crisis-planning exercises with multiple stakeholders across the government, security, and sports ecosystems. Eviden (a division of Atos, the lead IT integrator for the games) is managing Paris Olympics cybersecurity services and operations, “which can be delivered from a dedicated SOC for the games, as well as up to 17 SOCs worldwide,” according to the IDC report.

It’s a far cry from the jaw dropping gaffe made by Japan’s cybersecurity minister ahead of the 2020 Tokyo summer Olympics. Just two years before the games were scheduled to be held, Yoshitaka Sakurada admitted he didn’t use computers and seemed confused about how USB drives work.

Despite years of planning, anything can happen right up until the eleventh hour. Just before the opening ceremonies of the 2018 winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, Russian state sponsored hackers unleashed a malware attack dubbed Olympic Destroyer. It knocked out the official Olympics website and stadium Wi-Fi, wreaked havoc with broadcast operations and the on-site news media center, and prevented some spectators from entering the ceremonies when tickets couldn’t be printed off.