Memories of Wimbledon 2016

I’ll certainly remember the rain, and then the sunshine finally making an appearance in time for a superb men’s singles final between Andy Murray and Milos Raonic. But what I’ll remember most is how proud I felt hosting security clients and the BBC on-site at SW19, showing them the best of IBM Security in action.

Every Minute of Every Day

At live sporting events, fans expect to be fed statistics every minute of every day. IBM’s role as Wimbledon’s technology partner is to deliver this experience seamlessly.

The last thing fans want to think about is cybersecurity. We at IBM are dedicated to protecting the Wimbledon brand and its reputation as one of the premier tennis tournaments in the world.

IBM secures Wimbledon.com and websites for other major sporting events from our own cloud infrastructure using a defense-in-depth approach. With the scale of the global security challenge and the constantly changing threat landscape, we take our responsibility very seriously.

A Growing, Global Threat

In the bunker — the nerve center for IBM technology on-site at the tournament — I was able to share with clients a real-time threat map showing the millions of cybersecurity events IBM security experts monitor every day. People are often amazed when they see how threats increase around live sporting events, with these threats coming in from all over the world.

For the month of June 2016, we saw a 302 percent year-to-year increase in security events and attacks on the official website for the tournament. Even before the championships, in the week leading up to the first day of play, there was a 275 percent year-to-year increase in attacks.

When I reflect on previous years, the sheer enormity of the increase in attacks continues to surprise me, though perhaps it shouldn’t.

A View From the Wimbledon Bunker

During the tournament, I was fortunate enough show the BBC’s security correspondent, Gordon Corera, around the bunker to let him see what happens behind the scenes.

Gordon’s feature aired on BBC news on July 17, highlighting how IBM experts captured data in the bunker and what the security experts saw happening live on their screens.