InformationWeek

A Ring Of Security

By Robin Nelson
Issue date: July 1, 1996

Assuring security for the largest Olympiad is a planner's worst nightmare. The best guess in Atlanta at the beginning of June is that trained professionals--police, federal agents, military, etc.--will probably slightly outnumber the 10,000 athletes expected. The Defense Department, for example, is sending a Hazardous Materials Unit trained in decontamination techniques.

Technology will play a key role in providing Olympics security. One of the applications IBM developed for the Olympics Committee is an incident tracking program based on Lotus Notes. It's designed to let minimally trained personnel quickly record the key facts on anything from a minor accident to a full-fledged bomb threat so professional security people can discern and follow up trends or patterns.

Security needs affect technology particularly in areas where the welfare of athletes and officials is at issue. Ten Eastman Kodak accreditation stations will employ a new imaging system that produces photo ID cards that need no lamination, are coded with pictograms for specific venue access, and use a two-dimensional bar code to record the bearer's vital data. The photo ID is merely the first line of defense: Where security is tightest, at the Olympic Village, a second ID card produced by Sensormatic will be required for access. It will contain coded biometric (palm geometry) data that must correlate to a live scan as the bearer enters. But that's not all--the card also will have an embedded chip that is read remotely for yet another ID confirmation. This can all be linked to a master database to track athletes' movements to and from the Village.

A computer-aided design system based on an IBM RS/6000 and developed with Autodesk Inc. was used to determine "accreditation zones." Without special credentials, no one is admitted to areas in the venues where athletes warm up and wait before an event. The CAD system also was used to plan the street routes athletes will take from the Village to venues, as well as to place security, police, fire, and medical personnel.

Even information systems must be subject to high security precautions. "Everything is remotely backed up," notes Ron Palmich, director of IBM's Olympic Games Project. "We have main data centers in multiple, undisclosed locations, and can go to a recovery center that happens to be based in a semi-trailer." IBM would not, naturally, suggest where this mobile mainframe will be at any given time or what it would look like.

See next story in our special report: " Bottling The Virtual Games "

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