A senior figure in the British government has conceded that the London Olympics "will not be immune" to cyberattack and said that he expects millions of attacks to be launched during the Games.
Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude observed that the previous Games, staged in Beijing in 2008, saw 12 million cybersecurity incidents. And Mr Maude said he sees no reason to believe that things will be any different four years down the line. Consequently, the government has been working in unison with various stakeholders to ringfence the Olympics against the inevitable threat.
"We have rightly been preparing for some time a dedicated unit which will help guard the London Olympics against cyber-attack," he said. "We are determined to have a safe and secure Games."
The government minister, who is the man responsible for beating cybercrime in the UK, made the statements in Estonia, which is one of the leading countries in terms of fighting the threat.
"High-end cybersecurity solutions that were used 18 months ago by a limited number of organisations to protect their networks may already be out in the open marketplace - giving cybercriminals the knowledge to get round these protective measures," Mr Maude commented. "Our responses have to be fast and flexible. What works one day is unlikely to work a matter of months or even weeks later."
Back in 2011, the UK government announced the formation of a team of experts charged with protecting the 2012 Olympic Games from cybercrime. Recently, though, Olympic organisers said that they are not conscious of any specific threats. And while Mr Maude recognises that there is a threat of cybercrime, the Conservative MP said that it will not lead to "over-regulating" the internet in the UK.
This comes shortly after Mike Urban, the Director of Financial Crime at Risk Management Solutions Fiserv, the financial services technology provider, expressed fears that London's internet infrastructure will crash under the demand for data.
Speaking to computing.co.uk, Mr Urban warned that as many as nine million visitors could be vulnerable to cybercrime. "With a cashless Olympics, cards will be the only means of carrying out transactions," he explained. "This, combined with the influx of visitors expected in London, means that fraudsters are well placed to make the most of this event by targeting unsuspecting visitors to the Games."
