The beautiful game is secure in the cloud

London, 13 November 2012 - Interoute, owner operator of Europe’s largest cloud services platform, protected UEFA’s website and key logistics applications from repeated attacks throughout UEFA EURO 2012. Thanks to Interoute’s reinforced private cloud, millions of football fans around the world enjoyed a perfect online experience throughout the tournament, with an uninterrupted 31,000 web pages per second served to audiences at peak times.

Using a three-tier security approach, Interoute delivered unbroken continuity for the UEFA.com website and the unique UEFA Football Administration Management Environment (FAME). FAME is accessed by more than 40,000 users and is critical to UEFA as it helps to manage all the tournament logistics for UEFA Guests, players, sponsors, press and media.

Interoute was able to protect UEFA.com and FAME with its network level security built into its private cloud environment. Data accessing UEFA’s systems was screened and any malicious traffic mitigated by the bespoke service within Interoute’s network. At the second tier screened data was then checked by the managed Firewall service.

The Interoute Network Intrusion Prevention Service provided the third tier of protection by screening data that had passed through the previous two protective services. The Interoute Network Intrusion Prevention Service evaluated the data packets by type, signature and behaviour and then permitted or blocked the data traffic accordingly. This service integrated Next-Generation Intrusion Prevention Systems (NGIPS) from Sourcefire, which provided real-time, contextual visibility of the data traffic and applied intelligent security automation to mitigate threats.

Daniel Marion, Head of ICT, UEFA, commented “98% of UEFA’s ICT services are hosted in Interoute’s private cloud computing platform because security and responsiveness is key to delivering the best experience. The Interoute and UEFA team worked around the clock to ensure any attacks were handled quickly and we experienced no disruption to the UEFA EURO 2012 service.”

Matthew Finnie, Chief Technology Officer, Interoute, commented “The Interoute private cloud hosting infrastructure served up over 4 billion pages to fans all over the world, with visitors viewing numbers peaking at over 31 thousand pages per second. It’s not just major events that attract unwanted attention online, these days every business with a digital presence is open to attack. Interoute supports businesses across Europe to prevent DDoS and cyber attacks, with Intrusion Prevention Services, E-mail content filtering, log analysis and much more.”