Richmond FC Case Study Page 1
In mid-2017, Richmond Football Club sought the help of its long-time IT support partner, Greenlight ITC, to evaluate its security infrastructure and recommend necessary upgrades. The audit corroborated suspicions held by Simon Reinsch, the club's IT manager, who had noticed that the company's 15-year-old Check Point firewalls were outdated, unreliable, and posed risks to the business and its valuable intellectual property. As professional football clubs become more reliant on technology for player data, sports analytics, and video resources to enhance on-field performance and maintain competitiveness, Richmond faced a significant challenge. The absence of a secure VPN connection for remote access, whether from a training ground, stadium, home, or hotel, forced staff to rely on portable hard drives and personal devices to access data. Simon explained, “They couldn't access the data outside the club; it was necessary to use hard drives or transfer files to a local desktop to view them. We aimed to secure that process and prevent everyone from taking data off-site and using it as they wished.”