RSA Europe 2013 Protests from groups such as Fathers4Justice were more of a worry to London 2012 Olympic Games organisers than computer hackers, according to the former chairman of London 2012, Lord Sebastian Coe.

He said procedures put in place before the Games to guard its IT systems – including Wi-Fi networks in stadiums as well as the main Olympics website – had worked well.

In practice, risks from pressure groups and local political campaigners proved the biggest headache but precautions against all types of threat had to be prepared, he noted.

“The threats of disruption came from everything from Fathers4Justice through to taxi drivers, angry they weren’t allowed into the Olympic lanes. That tended to be the level of the threat. Most of the challenges weren’t terrorists, cyber or otherwise,” said Coe, who was speaking at the RSA Conference Europe 2013 which took place in Amsterdam this week.

Earlier at the conference, BT security chief executive officer Mark Hughes said that no cyber attack had occurred during the Games, repeating previous statements by the telco giant. BT dealt with over 212 million cyber attacks on the official website during last year’s Olympic and Para-Olympic Games.

A recent documentary from BBC Radio 4 revealed that London Olympics officials were warned hours before the opening ceremony that the event might come under cyber-attack.

The security team had already run extensive tests on the electricity supply systems supporting the games long before the threat, which, based on the discovery of “attack tools and targeting information”, it was feared might relate to the Olympics.

In the event nothing happened. The whole incident is more of an interesting case study on how to deliver super-reliable power supply systems rather than anything that sheds much light on the capabilities of hacktivists or other malign actors when it comes to attacking industrial control gear. It’s unclear who was behind the threat to the Olympics.

With the Olympic Games only weeks away, London is making the final preparations to host the biggest sporting event in the world.

But how much does it cost to stage the Olympics nowadays? How has this cost changed through time and where does the money come from?