When asked if they have given any consideration to security many event organisers and attendees admit they haven’t given it much thought. Unfortunately, but like many things in IT, security is not sexy but it is growing in importance. Within large corporate companies security teams get some weight but for most small and medium sized businesses they are relying on good behaviour from their users to keep data secure.

The recent incident at Sony has become what is likely to be one of a growing number of attacks by those with looking to cause damage to brands and governments. Sony spent over 13 million dollars dealing with the fallout of the issue. Although the risk to events by a security breach is lower, since systems are setup and then taken away in a relatively short period of time, it doesn’t mean that the data transferred could not be of value.

A further risk, which many do not realise, is that it’s not always obvious when a security breach has occurred, meaning that someone can take data for their own purposes and the user is none the wiser.

So faced with the risk of greater security related attacks what can organisers of events do?

Take a lead from your in house IT team.  Many organisations neglect to work with their in house IT teams when defining the specification for their event networks. This doesn’t mean that the IT team will have to provide resource or expertise regularly but what they can do is document a minimum specification of what is required. Providers can then use this to understand what they should be delivering. 

Use segmented networks.  An effective method for ensuring communications are private whilst on site is to operate a number of logical and segmented networks ensuring that any file shares are not visible to non-trusted users.

Use common sense.  Simple things can be done for example, not calling your event your company name. It may also be useful (for internal corporate events, or production teams) to have a wireless network profile already setup by the IT team on client devices, that way most people will never need to know the password since the profile is already in place.

Use software VPN.  When using networks which are not encrypted, one method of increasing security is to load a software VPN client prior to transmitting like having a private tunnel over the network.

Even though many events do not think network security is a cause for concern, but with more and more high profile cases some basic precautions can ensure the risk is limited.

Bonding an internet service means using various pieces of equipment to present multiple internet connections to the network as one single connection. By presenting the network with one single connection, all the logic of which external connection to use is removed from the internal routers and therefore the network just passes information.

Cellular bonding is a method of putting together multiple cellular modems, typically for more than one carrier (Vodafone, EE etc) so that if one network is under heavy demand, the bonding equipment will intelligently identify that and route more information down the other connections.

What is it?

A single box with external cellular antennas which supports up to 8 cellular connections. The connections are ‘4G’ capable but will work at the speed of the network in the local area, be that GPRS, 3G or 4G.

How fast is it?

Depending on the speeds of the local cellular network depends on how fast the connection may be. The table below (from CISCO) provides an overview of the ‘average’ speeds which customers may see on each network type (CISCO provide some interesting data about the number of users in each area in their report Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2013–2018 here)

What’s its capacity?

Again depending on the local network, services maybe excellent one hour and then slower the next once crowds attend or even based on a routine of the day (for example networks tend to be under more pressure during commuting times so 0730 – 0930 & 1630 – 1800 weekdays).

For what type of event?

Cellular connectivity is useful for very quick setups when internet access is not critical. A bonded service delivers the best speeds possible because it is able to use multiple services from multiple carriers.

Further information about satellite services can be found on our product page here