In a first of its kind partnership and event, cybersecurity students from Norwich University teamed up with Respond Software to monitor cyber attacks during the NCAA College Football Playoff Championship between the Clemson Tigers and Alabama Crimson Tide.
Together with stadium security, the team analyzed and resolved over 243,000 monitored events and threats during game day.
Of those events, Respond Analysts decided 200,097 events required deeper investigation, diagnosed 431 events as malicious and prioritized 13 events as needing immediate attention, escalating those to the Norwich University counterpart, according to a Jan. 9 press release.
"Protecting an event of this scale is no easy feat and near impossible with people alone," Respond Software C.E.O. Mike Armistead said in the release. "Norwich's trained cybersecurity students expertly leveraged Respond's technology to ensure the event was safeguarded against security breaches."
Researchers argue that every large sporting event should be monitored and analyzed for security since attendees can always be targets for malicious cyber activity such as malicious wifi-networks, data breaches and other threats.