• E-mail this page
• |  Print this page
• | 
• | 
• | 

IT Security At The Games

Given the high profile of the Olympic Games, it's no surprise that organizers of IT at the Beijing Olympics have made information security one of their highest priorities.

IT infrastructure provider Atos Origin is offering a range of security administration services to ensure identification and access management for the networks supporting the many applications in use.

For the Beijing Games, an Integrated Security Administrator (ISA) is providing enterprise-wide network security monitoring to collect and analyze data on possible threats and intrusions, so security administrators can react immediately to any events that might affect the performance of the network.

The company is using a variety of security technologies from companies such as CA, Cisco, and Symantec. But Atos Origin didn't disclose specifics on the security technologies.

The goal, as with many corporate security strategies, is to thwart viruses and hackers from intruding on systems. Such intrusions might not only disrupt operations, but affect the integrity of the data on event results, which is being relayed to media and others around the world.

Atos Origin, which has provided IT infrastructure for previous Olympics such as the Summer Games in Athens, says the security infrastructure at the Games is built on a risk management basis that enables the IT security team to recognize actual threats and respond quickly to them. The company says it's because of the efforts of the IT security team at previous Games that there were no information security incidents.

But the scope of the IT security effort at this Olympics is perhaps the biggest ever for such an event. Atos Origin is focusing on three key areas: security architecture, risk management, and security operations, to ensure that everything is in place to respond to any potential threat from either inside or outside the network.

In terms of architecture, designers built security into the infrastructure from the outset. Security measures include separation between the Games network and the Internet; segmentation of the Olympic network into different security domains; and the strategic placement of intrusion detection systems.

The IT risk management component included extensive testing before the Games, so the security team understands what is normal activity with applications, servers, PCs and the network. Now an incident can be logged immediately when the traffic becomes abnormal.

The strategy enables the IT security team to effectively respond to incidents on a prioritized basis, and keep the Games IT infrastructure protected from a wide range of threats, according to Atos Origin.

In the area of security operations, Atos Origin has trained the entire IT team in security policies and procedures. During the Games, the security team is operating 24-by-7 in order to respond to any incidents that occur.

« Securing Virtualization, Or Is That Virtualizing Security? | Main | As Google Goes Down, Private Clouds Go Up »