Allot Communications Ltd.—a leading provider of security and monetization solutions that enable service providers to protect and personalize the digital experience—recently released a report on “How the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro Put Mobile Business Users at Risk.”
The analysis found that business-user sports fans’ risk from malware and other online threats more than doubled during the early days of the Rio Games, with 55% of the potential risk stemming from intensified social media activity.
Major sporting events attract both fans and cybercriminals alike. Cybercriminals take advantage of the increased interest in the events to spread malicious malware and perpetuate fraud through phishing emails with infected links, fake ticket sales, bogus apps, and other methods. The threat to business users is unique in that their online activity poses a risk not only to themselves, but also to enterprise networks.
With a random sample of 1 million global mobile users being monitored before and during the Games, key findings reveal that:
- 23% of sports fans are business users. The percentage of business user sports fans at risk more than doubled, reaching 45.6% during the event versus 20.3% before the event.
- Once the Games began, the percentage of business user sports fans using risky social media apps more than tripled over their pre-event activity, reaching 30.2% during the event versus 9.7% before the event.
- Social media activity was prolific during the opening ceremony with many users multitasking on several social apps. Facebook brands came up on top with the highest percentage of active users engaging in WhatsApp, Facebook, and Facebook Messenger during the Rio Olympics opening ceremony.
The analysis builds on the recent Allot Mobile Trends Report Euro 2016 in collaboration with Kaspersky Lab, which revealed that the risk for digitally active sports fans more than doubled during the 2016 UEFA European Championship.
According to Yaniv Sulkes, AVP Marketing at Allot Communications, the Rio Olympics provided the perfect climate for major security threats for two reasons:
- The Games attracted cybercriminals targeting unsuspecting sports fans.; and
- Mobile users tend to take risks they wouldn’t normally take in their day-to-day lives.
Sulkes points out that lessons can be learned from sporting events such as Euro 2016 and the Rio Olympic Games and that businesses should be educated on the cyber risks associated with mobile devices.
