3‑93 Information System Digital MediaTokyo 2020 Games‑Time Official Website
and Mobile Application
YAMAMURA Masao

ICHIO Koji

The Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020 Time Official Website and Mobile Application was developed as adigital channel to disseminate Tokyo 2020 Games‑related information to Olympic and Paralympic fans and spectators
around the world and attracted the large number of unique user accesses even in comparison with the past Games The
application also blocked all cyber‑attacks and prevented serious cyber incidents

This article summarizes therequirements and technical approaches that were considered most important to achieve these goals and reviews theactual access to the system during the Games
Keywords：Official website & mobile application System availability Cyber security measures User experience

1．Introduction
The Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020

that attracted worldwide attention taking into accountthe technological aspects as well as key statistics fromthe actual Games(hereinafter referred to as “Tokyo 2020 Games”) Time
Official Website and Mobile Application (GTWA)
played an important role as a digital channel for the2．Summary of GTWA System Architecture

comprehensive dissemination of information related toGTWA is an Internet service that attracted attention

the Tokyo 2020 Games including competition schedules

from all over the world and was accessed by anand results the torch relay venue information precau-

unspecified large number of people and we proceeded

tions against heat and measures against the coronavirus

with the system design and development considering thedisease 2019 (COVID‑19) to Olympic and Paralympic

following three requirements in particular

Games fans and spectators around the world
As a result although the Tokyo2020 Games were held･

System availability to process high trafficwith virtually no audience due to the coronavirus･

Robust security measures against cyber attacks

pandemic they ultimately attracted a large number of･User experience for efficient dissemination ofunique users during the Games TimeTokyo 2020 Games‑related information

This article looks back on how we built the system
The following sections (2 1 to 2 3) describe theYAMAMURA Masao
Technology Services Bureau The Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olympic
and Paralympic GamesE‑mail yamamuram@nttdocomo com
ICHIO Koji
Technology Services Bureau The Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olympic
and Paralympic GamesE‑mail ichio koji@jp fujitsu com

The Journal of The Institute of Electronics Information and Communication Engineers Vol 105 No 8 Supplement pp 169‑173 August 2022
© 2022 The Institute of Electronics Information and Communication Engineers

technical approach to achieving these requirements
21

System Availability

211

Cloud Platform

We used a global‑scale cloud platform to host theorigin VM servers with a multi‑region configuration in
geographically sufficiently distant regions and a multi‑Special Issue : Technology and Innovation in the Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020169

availability zone configuration within each region This

major security alert exceeding the level was generated

ensured high availability scalability and system redun-

the alert was escalated in real time and the TOC

dancy that could cope with disaster recovery in case of(Technology Operation Centre) started the incident

emergency

control to smoothly isolate and respond coordinatingwith all related partners

212

CDN (Contents Delivery Network)

Since the partners were located around the world

CDN was installed in front of the origin servers tointensive trainings were conducted through cybercache contents on distribution servers located aroundsecurity table‑top exercises and technical rehearsals

the world distribute them from there to reduce the loadconcentration on the origin servers and process the high23

user traffic

dynamic contents such as

GTWA played the role of a hub for all informationcompetition schedules and results information wererelated to the Tokyo 2020 Games and we pursued user

dynamically included on the distribution server using

experience to efficiently deliver information that users

ESI (Edge Side Includes) technology which further

wanted and also built a back‑end system for operators

reduced the load on the origin server and achieved highto edit and publish Tokyo 2020 related contents in aperformancetimely and efficient manner

In addition

User Experience

Prior to release performance tests were conducted on
the entire platform and results showed that the system231

was able to continuously process 100 k concurrent

GTWA supported seven languages (Japanese Chi-

Supported Languages

connections (average of over 500 kreq /s) This number

nese English Korean French Spanish and Hindi) thewas sufficient for the demand forecast

largest number of languages supported for the digital
media ever in the history of the Olympic and Paralympic

22

Cyber Security Measures

Since several serious security incidents due to cyber‑attacks had occurred in past Games cyber‑security

Games In particular mobile applications automaticallyread the language settings of the userʼs device anddisplayed contents in the most appropriate language

measures for servers that were open to the Internet had
to be developed with extra care The security measures

232

taken were reviewed through system audits andThe GTWA project team completed the service

Website and Mobile Application Development

penetration tests to ensure that they were properly andrequirements definition through a number of meetings

fully implementedand reviews with the relevant departments within theTokyo 2020 Organising Committee The application was221

Security Solution

As a solution CDN was used to protect against cyber‑then developed and refined with top‑level partners inthe sports technology industry in almost 60 cycles ofattacks from the Internet and EDR (Endpoint Detection

agile sprints over a three‑year period including theand Response) to detect suspicious behavior on endpoint

postponement period of Tokyo 2020 Games

servers The log information obtained was stored in

For instance easy content personalization and sign‑

SIEM (Security Information and Event Management)

up through onboarding single sign‑on with Tokyo 2020

and the Cyber SOC (Security Operation Centre)

ID to other digital channels provided by Tokyo 2020

monitored the log on a 24‑hour basis This enabled theOrganising Committee such as My TOKYO2020 site

isolation rapid detection and response to the cyber‑official ticket site official online shop site and so on

attacks on the GTWA system
A vulnerability management operation system wasalso utilized to obtain the latest vulnerability information
and respond to them in a timely manner233

CMS (Contents Management System) Development

To disseminate the latest Olympic and Paralympic
Games information in a timely manner during the Games

222

Incident Response Flow

Time Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee and the IOC

The first level incident response manual was createdjointly established a global content editing team and theyfor typical cyber‑attack scenarios so that the Cyber SOC

worked in shifts Also the back‑end Content Manage-

could complete the response by themselves and when ament System (CMS) was developed and customized for170

THE JOURNAL OF THE INSTITUTE OF ELECTRONICS INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION ENGINEERS

Table 1Major Statistics during the Tokyo 2020 Games

ItemNumberPeriodTotal number of unique users199 million

1 Jan 2021‑5 Sep 2021

Total number of page views

1 34 billion

1 Jan 2021‑5 Sep 2021

Total number of mobile app downloads

5 5 million

25 May 2021‑5 Sep 2021 ＊1

Peak number of concurrent users

261 housand/minute

21：48 27 Jul 2021

Peak number of page views

191 thousand/minute

20：52 7 Aug 2021

Total number of cyber‑attacks blocked

163 million

Total number of critical security incidents

0Average CDN cache hit rate

98 5%

＊1

23 Jul 2021‑8 Aug 2021 and
24 Aug 2021‑5 Sep 2021

25 May 2021 : Pre‑release date of the official mobile appthem to improve the efficiency of editing work
For example a dedicated template for each content
page such as a live blogging was provided to minimize
the number of editing points and reduce the workload
and integration with external services such as photo
albums weather and WBGT (heat index) information
enabled the automatic contents update via Push
notification
Figure 1

Daily Transition in Page Views/Unique Users

3．Key Statistics during Tokyo 2020 Games TimeThe main statistics of the GTWA system during theTokyo 2020 Games are shown in Table 1 and discussed inSections 3 1 through 3 5 Note that the figures for cybersecurity are those that occurred only during the Olympicand Paralympic Games excluding the transition period
31

Number of Unique Users/Page Views

GTWA was positioned as a digital channel for
disseminating Tokyo 2020 Games information to users
and also as a means of realizing the digital marketingstrategy of the Olympic and Paralympic Games For theTokyo 2020 Games 200 million unique users were set as
Figure 2

KPI (key performance indicator) and the target wasTop 10 Countries in Page Views

almost achieved with 199 million unique users including
31 million mobile app users which was a little more than
15% As mentioned earlier this was a very large number

views indicating they had a high level of interest in theof user accesses even in comparison with the past

Tokyo 2020 Games On the other hand 49% of theGames indicating that the status of Internet media as aaccesses were from other countries not in the top tenmeans of watching the Olympic and Paralympic Games

indicating that thanks to the provision of contents in

is improving more and more (Figure 1)

seven languages many people from all over the world

In terms of page views there were a total of 1 34

accessed GTWA (Figure 2)

billion accesses During Tokyo 2020 Games approximately 90% of the user accesses were to the pages of thecompetition schedule results and medals

32Mobile Applications

The number of downloads of the official mobile

In addition Japan the host country was ranked in theapplication began to increase rapidly after the start ofsecond of the top ten countries/regions in terms of page

the Olympics Games as expected but then suddenlySpecial Issue : Technology and Innovation in the Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020

171

slowed down over the next few days (Figure 3) The

the reasons why the number of mobile application

mobile application was intended to deliver proper

download did not increase as expected

information in a timely manner to Japanese andinternational spectators visiting the venues by utilizing

The ratio of the number of app downloads per
mobileOS was 47% for Android and 53% for iOS

the push notification function However due to thecoronavirus pandemic Tokyo 2020 Games was held with33

Peak Accessalmost no spectators in the venues and the promotion

Peak accesses were considered to have been proc-

could not be conducted sufficiently that may be one ofessed well within the range guaranteed in the performance test There was no significant peak and thenumber of traffic increased and decreased repeatedly indaily cycle (Figure 4 and Figure 5)
34

Cyber Security Measures

Regarding access to the GTWA system the numberof blocked unauthorized communications including
cyber‑attacks began to increase gradually about 10days before the opening ceremony of the Olympics
peaked on the second day and did not reach any
significant peaks thereafter (Figure 6)
Figure 3

Figure 4

Daily Transition in Mobile App Downloads

Transition in Concurrent Users per Minute (OlympicGames Time)

Figure 6172

During theOlympic and Paralympic Games the CDN blocked all ofFigure 5

Transition in Page Views per Minute (OlympicGames Time)

Daily Transition in Total Number of Accesses (page views) and Blocked Communications
Including Cyber Attacks

THE JOURNAL OF THE INSTITUTE OF ELECTRONICS INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION ENGINEERS

in various fields from around the world were engaged tofocus on platform availability scalability user experience and cyber security measures Also an efficient
operation flow was developed to work closely withpartners and suppliers involved in operations during theTokyo 2020 Games As a result we could successfully
operate GTWA systems without any serious incident
GTWA systems were built in collaboration with IOCand Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee which were for
Figure 7

Daily Transition in CDN Cache Hit Rate (bits)

the first time in the history of the Olympic andParalympic Games They will be taken over by IOC andthe 163 million unauthorized communications in total

used as a valuable legacy for future Games In addition

and Tokyo 2020 Games successfully completed without

we believe that the knowledge and successful experien-

any impact on services No major security incidents

ces of the engineers and managers who participated inwere escalated by the SOC during the Games indicating

this project will be of great significance to the Japanesethat security measures of GTWA achieved significant

industry in the future

success(Received February 28 2022)

35

Cache Hit Rate

During the Olympic and Paralympic Games CDN
recorded a very high cache hit rate of 98 5% on average
which was effective enough to improve response quality(Figure 7)

Also

the origin server operated stably

during this period without running out of resources

4．Conclusion
In the past Games the official websites and mobile
application of the Olympic and Paralympic Games werebuilt for limited‑time events ; however

it also had

characteristics that they attracted significant accesses
from users around the world and could become thetarget of cyber‑attacks repeatedly therefore the stable
operation of the systems was a challenge for the Olympicand Paralympic organising committees
While building the GTWA systems experts/partners

YAMAMURA Masao
Masao Yamamura completed his masterʼsdegree at the University of Tokyo in 1999 andwas transferred from NTT DOCOMO Inc tothe Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee in July
2018 where he was engaged in planning
development and operation of mobile‑related
projects as Director of the Channel Systems
Section Information Systems Department
Technology Services Bureau He is currently inthe Product Design Department NTT DOCOMO Inc
ICHIO Koji
Koji Ichio completed his masterʼs degree at
Osaka University in 2010 and was transferredfrom Fujitsu Limited to the Tokyo 2020
Organising Committee in April 2017 where hewas engaged in planning development andoperation of mobile‑related projects as Manager of the Channel Systems Section Information
Systems Department Technology Services
Bureau He is currently with the Digital
Transportation Business Division of Fujitsu
Limited㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇Special Issue : Technology and Innovation in the Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020

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