LONDON: Britain's security minister said more needed to be done to avoid the 2012 London Olympics becoming a soft target for cyber criminals.
The Olympic security budget looks set to be cut as part of government spending savings, but minister Pauline Neville-Jones said it would not jeopardise safety.
Planning has moved into the operational phase, with tests due to increase during the coming year, and while “tried and tested” techniques such as risk analysis and intelligence would be the norm, flexibility would be key.
Cyber threats, particularly ticketing fraud, posed a major threat, the minister said. An estimated 12 million cyber attacks took place a day during the Beijing 2008 Games.
A major strategy has been learning “how to build buildings in a more secure way”, such as checking and sealing pipes in venues to protect against bombs, she told a Games security seminar at the Royal United Services Institute in London.
Other improved techniques include boosting the airwave network and working on accreditation and border security.
“It is not a moment for the Olympics to go for novelty,” Neville-Jones said.
“That said, we are combining our experience and techniques...with more advanced ways to assess risk management than we were possibly capable of doing more than 10 years ago.”
An audit has been carried out as part of the new coalition government's plans to reduce a record peacetime budget deficit, the results of which will be published in the next few weeks.
The Olympic Games will pose the biggest security challenge for Britain since World War Two. The previous Labour government put aside 600 million pounds on security -- a figure that some experts think will be half of what is needed.
Britain has been a target of militants in the recent past. In July 2005, four young British Islamists carried out suicide bomb attacks killing 52 commuters on the capital's transport network, the day after the city was awarded the Games.
“I am in no doubt that efficiency savings can and should be made...we will not countenance unacceptable levels of risk and this will be reflected in the funding,” Neville-Jones said.
Wary of online security, the government is working with Olympic authorities and companies to alert sports fans against using fake websites.
“The Games unavoidably are an attractive cyber target. What we have got to ensure is that it is not extraordinarily a soft target,” she said.
The minister said planning was on track, but challenges lay ahead.
The important thing was to strike the right balance between effective security and an unobtrusive presence that did not affect people's enjoyment of the Games, she said. – Reuters