Next month, athletes from countries around the world will arrive in Paris for the long-awaited 2024. Summer Olympics.
As competitors prepare for their chance to win a highly coveted medal this year, those tasked with overseeing the more than two-week-long event continue to prepare a defense against cybersecurity threats.
As “bad actors” have shifted toward automation, using more sophisticated methods to launch cyberattacks has become much easier over the past decade. However, the responsible use of artificial intelligence offers the opportunity to counter some of those threats.
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The Olympic rings are installed in Trocadero Square, overlooking the Eiffel Tower, a day after the official announcement that the 2024 Summer Olympics will take place in the French capital. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
Sports leagues and organizations can turn to leading AI-powered companies, like Visual Edge IT, that specialize in risk reduction. Visual Edge IT has worked with hundreds of clients in the US and Europe.
An international event like the Olympic Games certainly faces considerable obstacles when it comes to security.
While Visual Edge IT does not work directly with the Olympic Games, cybersecurity expert Peter Avery shared some insights on how Olympic organizers can maximize risk reduction and detailed what a game plan should entail in the event of a cyber event.
WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)?
“At the core of what I do is helping clients reduce risk with respect to their technical, physical and administrative controls around their business,” Avery, vice president of security and compliance at Visual Edge IT, told Fox News. Digital. “The love for protecting organizations and what the Olympics are facing is quite big… it's a big challenge.”
“In general, it is essential that in every decision we make in business and even in our personal lives we keep in mind that we have to protect ourselves. It is unfortunate that this is where we are in the world, but they are attacking the elderly.” They are attacking young people, they are attacking companies… they are going after how we make a living, how we survive. And then even our infrastructure and also the supply chain, we have to worry about our water supply. about being able to buy food because all of those events can be interrupted at any time with the right cyber event.”
AI presents an opportunity to counter cybersecurity threats at the Paris Olympics. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
While AI has certainly created a number of advantages, those gains also come with some drawbacks.
“With the rise of AI (or machine learning)…as a fact to increase our productivity on the legitimate side of business…cybercrime has also been able to similarly accelerate its growth,” Avery added. “Their ability to automate and carry out attacks through that automation in a way never seen before. Ten years ago, it took someone sophisticated to launch a cyber attack against a company. Now it's almost like a franchise model. They are welcome . packages, they have started training for groups.”
Avery said having a robust incident response plan for cybersecurity will be critical for this summer's Olympics.
“To begin with, the Internet is going to be overloaded in Paris simply because of the number of people accessing the Internet. First of all, their systems have to be very robust, there has to be redundancy built into everything they are doing. And they really have to Think of space safety as defensive depth rather than defensive layers,” Avery said.
“When I talk to organizations about cybercrime, it's not a question of if… it's always a question of when. So when this happens, what are we going to do? And the first step is to have an incident response plan and test Right now, the people who are organizing the Olympics need people to sit at a table and say, 'Okay, the power just went out from our main supplier. What happens next?' And as they do that exercise, they will illuminate a lot of other things that could happen that would impact other things.”
South facade of the Bourbon Palace with the flags of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in Paris on June 4, 2024. (RICCARDO MILANI/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images)
Some cyberattacks are driven by disinformation. However, Blackbird.AI created an AI-based narrative intelligence platform called Constellation. The platform efficiently identifies narratives that were derived from some type of misinformation.
The platform then begins a process in which the technology analyzes the narrative, measures the level of risk and adds context. All of these steps are done to provide clarity, which in turn allows organizations or anyone leveraging the platform to have the best information at their disposal when it comes to making critical decisions.
“We have a platform called Constellation, our intelligence platform, where we can discover, analyze, investigate online conversations on any platform and [help determine] the risk that this entails. We look at the visibility of the narrative,” Sarah Boutboul, an intelligence analyst at Blackbird.AI, told Fox News Digital.
International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach recently expressed the need to responsibly adopt AI in sports. In April, the IOC shared its AI plan, which includes identifying talent, personalizing training and improving the impartiality of judges.
International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach speaks at the opening of the IOC executive board meeting at the Olympic House in Lausanne, Switzerland, Tuesday, March 19, 2024. (Laurent Gillieron/Keystone via AP)
“Today we take another step to guarantee the uniqueness of the Olympic Games and the relevance of sport. To do this, we have to be leaders of change,” said Bach during a press conference in the then former Olympic Park in London. . “We are determined to exploit the enormous potential of AI responsibly.”
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The Summer Olympics begin on July 26 and conclude on August 11.
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