As the Paris Olympic Games draw closer, security leaders warn that the event faces a high risk of targeted cyber incidents. Cyber threat activity may include disruptive and destructive operations, espionage, financial threats, information operations, hacktivism and more. These cyber incidents could impact Paris infrastructure, event sponsors, ticketing systems, athletes and spectators. 

Thomas Richards, Principal Consultant at Synopsys Inc, says, “With the Olympics being a major international event, it becomes a lightning rod of attention. It is not without controversy and attracts attention from activists, criminal organizations, and nation states. Attackers could be looking to disrupt the events or alter results. The Olympics will certainly face DDoS attacks that can be mitigated by preventing common DDoS attack patterns and building a distributed and resilient network to distribute and handle excess network traffic. Attackers will also try to infiltrate the Olympic networks through any means they can, including phishing and physically trying to access network interfaces and connection closets. Olympic employees should be trained and regularly tested to identify and prevent phishing attacks. All central networking closets should be locked and protected with additional security, like biometrics, if possible.”