Early last year, as thousands of athletes paraded for the opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang, television and computer screens at the main press center went blank, broadcasters’ drones were grounded and users were unable to follow the first sporting events online or print out their tickets. The Games had become the latest victim of a cyberattack targeting a high-profile global event.
With less than 18 months to go until Dubai starts welcoming millions of visitors to Expo 2020, a critical priority for organizers is to protect the world fair from the increasingly audacious ranks of cyber criminals.
“Expo 2020 will be much more of a challenge than the Olympic Games, which lasted for only two weeks,” says Karim Sabbagh, CEO of DarkMatter Group, the UAE’s leading digital and cyber transformation firm, and the official cybersecurity provider to the event. “Expo 2020 will last for six months, will be the most digitized fair ever and will be a project of national significance for the UAE.
Digital enhancements are going to be a core part of the visitor experience. It is our job to secure all of those digital assets for every second of those six months.”
DarkMatter will provide a wide range of services for Expo 2020, ranging from security management and monitoring to risk assessments, incident response and technical forensics. The company will make extensive use of AI and applied analytics to help determine where to focus its defenses against the thousands of attacks that are expected to target the fair every day.
To protect the event, DarkMatter is already leveraging global resources from research and development centers across North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, as well as know-how from some 650 employees of more than 60 nationalities.
“Expo 2020 will provide us with an international platform to showcase our digital expertise,” Sabbagh says. “Our ambition is to be a truly global player in cybersecurity.”
As published in TIME magazine
