For the athletes competing at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, the global event served as the culmination of years of hard work, dedication and sacrifice. Likewise, for the Cisco Rio 2016 team, the Olympic and Paralympic Games represent more than three years of dedication and 34,000 engineering hours to plan, design and support a network built with more than 60 tons of equipment.

No prior Olympic Games has required the amount of networking equipment or manpower to support the connected operations on the ground as Rio 2016. The Olympic Family -including 15,000 athletes and their family members; 70,000 volunteers; 25,000 accredited media; and 3,000 people working tirelessly on the ground and behind the scenes -all relied on Cisco's network. And thanks to our fabulous team of engineers and technicians, Cisco delivered a secure network that was more than just reliable -it was flawless!

• Nearly 150,000 devices connected to the Cisco network
• More than 1.4 petabytes (PB) of data crossed our network during the Games. To put that into perspective, 1.4 PB is equivalent to 620,000 hours of HD video, which would take someone more than 70 years of nonstop streaming to watch.
• More than 4 million security threats, ranging from simple policy violations to Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) incidents, were detected and mitigated by Cisco's security infrastructure
• In protection of all official Rio 2016 public websites and mobile apps, Cisco and Rio 2016 security partner solutions detected 40 million security threats, blocked 23 million attacks and mitigated 223 major DDoS attacks

While providing technology is at the core of our support of the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games, it is certainly not our only priority. Cisco has been invested in Brazil for nearly three decades now, committed to digitizing the country and bringing more technology, education and digital opportunities to Brazilians.

At the heart of our Rio 2016 program lies a desire to connect the unconnected. And nowhere is this more apparent than our work in the Porto Maravilha region of Rio, where we installed free public Wi-Fi for residents and visitors in the area to utilize; incubated entrepreneurs to bring their IoT solutions to life; and collaborated with various organizations to foster ideas, action and digital transformation in Rio.

As part of an initiative developed by Cisco, the Olympic City Technical Program provided network training to more than 300 local students, better positioning them for future employment in the IT sector. For people like Edna Felix, this was an opportunity of a lifetime.

And it must be mentioned that part of Cisco's legacy to Brazil is Cisco House itself! Our team worked tirelessly over the past several years to ensure that Cisco House was an incredible showcase of the work that Cisco is doing to digitize Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and the Games. With some of the most amazing and iconic views in Rio, Cisco House hosted more than 3,100 customers, partners, employees and guests during the Games, and will continue to do so throughout the Paralympics. This fully-renovated facility will be handed back as part of our Olympic legacy after the Games are complete.

I enjoyed my time in Rio de Janeiro immensely and was reminded of the incredible value that opportunities such as the Olympic Games bring to our company. And with the Paralympics beginning tomorrow, we are excited to keep that momentum going. I could not be more proud of our team in Rio and around the globe who made this project such a success. There has truly never been a better time to support the Olympic and Paralympic Games!