Just a few hours ago the final match of FIFA World Cup 2018 was conducted in Russia’s Luzgniki Stadium between France and Croatia and it was France which bagged the World Cup Football 2018 title for the second time. No doubt the game was thrilling even though most of the time the ball was shuffled by France players into the football court of Croatia.
Now coming to the information which is of our interest, the news is out that the IT infrastructure used for the Football World 2018 was free from cyber attacks.
Yes, you’ve read it right! Many security analysts expected that either the semi-final or the final of Football event will be disrupted by a digital attack. But as the venue was Russia, no one dared to intercept the infrastructure as the country is known for its sophistication in mitigating such cyber threats with ease.
But have to agree that it was a collective work of the event organizers and the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) which kept the football mega event isolated from cyber attacks of any genre.
Sources reporting to our Cybersecurity Insiders say that players, fans visiting the country for viewing the event, staff organizing the event, and those connected to the event were discouraged from using a public Wi-Fi from the beginning. They were also discouraged from doing online banking or online shopping during an event.
Countries like England and France asked their players and the fans visiting Russia to keep their credentials and sensitive financial data safe as they will go through Russian Telecommunication Infrastructure and who knows when a hacker intercepts the data.
Full disk encryption on laptops, phones, and tablets used by players, supportive staff and the organizers was highly encouraged. They were also asked not to use any promotional USB sticks given away during the World Cup Football 2018 as it might contact malware and can harm the device and can siphon sensitive data which can be used by hackers or those betting online to make money.
The entire network infrastructure used by the event organizers was protected from denial of service attacks.
As almost all major international sporting events become targets to major cyber attacks, health cybersecurity hygiene was put in place to follow from Feb this year for the organizers, players, those managing IT infrastructure and the security staff of the players.
Hence, it seems that all this hard work has eventually paid out full.
Note- A special statement released on Monday by the Office of Putin states that the Information structures of Russia were targeted by 25 million cyber attacks during June- July of this year and they were all connected to the world cup in one way or the other. However, the office failed to indicate who may have been behind the attacks and how many of those attacks were neutralized.
