Simon Stone
BBC Sport’s chief football news reporter

Extra precautions are being taken to ensure the new-look
Champions League draw in Monaco on 29 August is not wrecked by a cyber-attack.

Uefa are changing the format of all three club competitions
this season.

Instead of a 32-team group phase, featuring groups of four,
36 teams will qualify for the main phase, which will involve a single table
with each club being given eight different opponents in the Champions League
and Europa League, and six in the Conference League.

The top eight sides go straight through to the last-16, the
teams finishing ninth to 24th will go into a play-off and the bottom
eight will be eliminated. Once the current qualification phase is over, teams
will not play in more than one competition.

The actual draw procedure will be done through detailed
computer software, rather than the previous system of balls being drawn from
bowls. Uefa estimate if they had retained that system it would have required
over 1000 balls and taken over four hours to conduct the draw.

Instead, a ball will be drawn to identify a club, starting
in Pot One, and that club’s eight opponents will be allocated at random by
computer, with two to be played – one home, one away – from each pot of nine
teams, which will be determined in order of merit by Uefa’s club coefficient
table. Uefa believe the time taken for the draw will remain at around 35
minutes.

Whilst many global companies have been subject to cyber-attack,
David Gill, the chief technology officer of AE Live, who are responsible for
the system Uefa will use, feels they have taken all necessary precautions.

“Cyber security is something we all have to deal with and
take extremely seriously as a business,” he said.

“There are a number of protections we have in place in order
to ensure we are safe and secure. The draw itself will be conducted in an
entirely closed environment so there will be no external access from external
interference.

“Access to our code is controlled through multi-factoral
authentication and a very limited amount of people have access to our code. As
a business, we conduct regular penetration testing and we have done additional
risk assessments around cyber attacks because we are raising our head above the
parapet.”