As the government gears up to secure the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, a top U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) official said the mission is a massive challenge, in part because multiple agencies use different operating systems that don’t always coordinate.
“At national security events, you get dozens of agencies, hundreds maybe of different systems with multiple missions covering the air, the ground, even mail, packages, shipping, all the routes in, and higher-level airspace all at once, and you want an integrated common operating picture,” said Ryan Riccucci, senior advisor for law enforcement and technology integration at CBP. “That takes a specific software stack in the middle, and data orchestration to process, make sense of, and connect the data.”
“The ability to parse through that information in a dense event like that, where you may have three different operation centers that aren’t seeing a fused picture … is tough,” Riccucci said on Oct. 28 at the Red Hat Government Symposium in Washington, D.C. That’s partly why, he added, “I think on the on the threat side, the threat moves much faster and adapts much faster than us.”
Yet Riccucci also cited what he called “tremendous progress in in cybersecurity,” both for major events and in the day-to-day work of his agency along the U.S. borders. “If you think about the massive amount of technology we deploy and the massive amounts of threats that are mitigated every day, and the fact that the lights are on and we’re still doing our job, then something is working,” he said.
Riccucci, who has worked at CBP for more than 18 years, said the agency’s data stores also make it well equipped to face threats. “I’m pretty sure CBP has more data than every other law enforcement agency combined. … If you think about the billions of records that we process today for trade, travel, immigration,” he said.
CBP and other federal agencies already executed a trial run of their security plans for the Olympics at the 2026 FIFA World Cup. For both events, the agency is expanding its use of artificial intelligence (AI), biometric systems, and advanced screening technologies to support security operations.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), CBP’s parent agency, invested $115 million into drone and counter-drone technologies in anticipation of the World Cup, which took place in June and July. CBP deployed a team of more than 700 employees to help keep the event safe.
Overall, DHS hailed the results as “the safest and most successful World Cup in history,” with no major security incidents through 38 days of competition on U.S. soil.
Yet Riccucci said the complexities of securing major events still trouble him, especially the lack of coordination and integration among multiple agencies and systems. “What keeps me up at night is the fact that technology is evolving faster than policy can keep up and than people can keep up,” he said.
To solve integration and interoperability problems, Riccucci called for more precision in government contracting requirements. He also said government contractors should start their pitches to agencies by focusing less on the newest technology and more on how their systems will help officials make better security decisions.
“So often we start with, ‘Hey, I have this cool thing,’” he said. “I think there’s a missing class of requirements, which is decision requirements … Start with decisions tied to data, and then your requirements work to execute the solution.”