Quarterback Trevor Lawrence of the Clemson Tigers carries the ball against Shyheim Carter of the Alabama Crimson Tide during the fourth quarter in the CFP National Championship at Levi’s Stadium on Jan. 7, 2019. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
While the Clemson defense was holding the Alabama offense scoreless from early in the second quarter of Monday’s NCAA College Football Playoff title game—the Tigers went on to route the Tide 44-16—another team was running cyber defense elsewhere in Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif.
Cybersecurity platform Respond Software worked with students from Norwich University’s Cyber Conflict Research Institute as well as in-stadium security personnel to guard against potential cyber attacks that might affect the event. More than 243,000 cyber events were monitored during the title game using Respond Software’s artificial intelligence-based decision platform called Respond Analyst. Norwich University, a private military college based in Vermont, had announced a partnership with Respond Software shortly before the game.
“Protecting an event of this scale is no easy feat and near impossible with people alone,” said Mike Armistead, CEO of Respond Software, in a press release. “Norwich’s trained cybersecurity students expertly leveraged Respond’s technology to ensure the event was safeguarded against security breaches.”
Of those 243,000 events, Respond Analyst determined 200,097 required deeper inquiry and diagnosed 431 events as “malicious.” Norwich students investigated 13 events that were declared as needing immediate attention and acted to reduce the cyber threats.
According to Respond, its system performed the equivalent work of more than 125 human analysts during the Clemson-Alabama matchup. According to the company’s press release, each human analyst would only have the bandwidth to analyze about 14,000 events in the same time period.
SportTechie Takeaway
An increase in hacking incidents at sporting events has created awareness for the need to boost cybersecurity in the sports industry. Just two days before the PGA Championship last August, hackers breached the PGA of America’s computer servers and demanded a bitcoin ransom. During the same month, daily fantasy sports provider DraftKings faced a cyberattack that shut down its servers for 20 minutes. A federal judge in Massachusetts granted DraftKings legal permission to launch its own private investigation to identify the assailants responsible for that cyber attack.
