Paris (AFP)

The Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, sponsor of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and partner of the Paris 2024 Games, debated Monday evening during a roundtable on cybersecurity, the prefect in charge of major sporting events evoking a subject "to be deepened very quickly with the Olympic world".

In front of an audience of cybersecurity specialists, the question of Alibaba's partnership was detailed by another partner of the IOC and the Paris Olympics, which is the company Atos.

"The CIO's decision has been taken. We have ported all our critical applications to Alibaba," explained Daniel Le Coguic, director of big data and security activities at Atos, during this round table organized by the European Security Circle. information systems.

"This was not the case in Tokyo but in Beijing (Winter Olympics 2022, editor's note) we are switching all the applications to Alibaba and it is planned to have them also for the moment in Paris 2024," he added. he continued.

"Is the cybersecurity proposed by Alibaba compatible with the recommendations, the will of the French government to protect a certain number of data, processes, related to the Games?", He asked.

Invited to react, the prefect Ziad Khouri, who has just arrived as coordinator for the security of the Olympic and Paralympic games of 2024, dependent on the Ministry of the Interior, replied: "We will have in the next few days discussions on this subject".

"There is a subject of data protection with the European regulations. It is a rather complicated subject and that is not obvious. We will have to deepen it very quickly with the Olympic world, to see how we do it. depending on all the constraints ", he added without further details.

Thomas Collomb, deputy director of security for the organizing committee for the Paris 2024 Games, for his part assured that "the risk analyzes carried out on cooperation with Alibaba do not raise particular issues that could compromise the organization".

And to clarify: "It is very complicated for an organizing committee to dismiss a partner of the IOC. It cannot do it on its own initiative except when there is very strong state pressure which justifies being able to do so. dismiss a partner ".

Atos and Alibaba are among the fifteen “top sponsors” of the IOC.

On the sidelines of this round table, some IT managers protested against AFP.

"Frankly, next to the big talk about digital sovereignty, it's discouraging!", Explained one of them.

When another, IT security manager in a large luxury company, was indignant, dismayed: "are we really going to give all the data to the Chinese government?"

© 2021 AFP