One billion people worldwide watched the 2012 London Olympics Opening Ceremony (directed by Slumdog Millionaire and Trainspotting film director Danny Boyle). And for two weeks the world will be captivated by the biggest sporting spectacle on the planet: it reached 83% of the world’s potential TV audience in 2008.
Since 2008, there’s been proliferation in the ways people can follow the Olympics. Mobile, social media and live streaming coverage have all multiplied rapidly.
-->Read how: The Olympics will transform patterns global internet usage.
Unfortunately though, the massive audience for sport online is music to the ears of cybercriminals. Spammers are using the Games to capture email addresses. Phishing scams for non-existent tickets are across the web. Fraudulent websites (often containing malware and viruses) have been gamed to feature high up in search engines using Black Hat SEO.
Live streaming sites are one of the biggest culprits because they generate the most interest from sports fans. They should be treated with absolute caution. An indication of their popularity can be seen below, in the screenshot of Google’s monthly keyword search tool.
Olympics Live Streaming in Australia
You should only stream live sport from official providers who own the online broadcasting rights. To watch the Olympic Games live online in your country, check the list of official London 2012 broadcasters.
In Australia for example, the online rights are owned by Nine and live streaming can be accessed here and here. Foxtel customers (pay TV subscribers) can download the London 2012 app and get live streaming wherever they go.
There are other places offering live streaming and Olympics coverage; however these are most likely not legitimate and could carry an unpleasant payload.
There are instances where users are tricked into downloading a program through which live coverage is supposed to be streamed. But in actual fact the executable file is found to harbour viruses or malware.
Our advice would be to avoid these sites altogether.
Live streaming in the workplace
Live streaming can be problematic in the workplace. Besides using high levels of valuable bandwidth and potentially affecting network performance, it can open up your business to unwanted threats.
The best way to avoid the problem is to ensure you have adequate security in place.
1) Ensure your desktop AV is up to date on every single machine in your office
2) Beef up your protection by using a web security service in the cloud (no installation, always up to date, and no maintenance).
How to prevent live streaming altogether
If you’d prefer to stop live streaming in your workplace, WebGuard web filtering service can be customised right down to the individual user level, to specify which sites can and can’t be browsed.
For more information, download a brochure.
