Sydney FC has upgraded its cyber security to better protect its player and customer data.
The club has boosted its data loss prevention, cyber threat protection and security practices such as phishing training for its staff.
It also has the data of over 20,000 members, half a million social media followers and family data from children partaking in its holiday programs to protect.
CEO Mark Aubrey said a solution was built in partnership with cyber security and data protection company, Acronis and managed service provider, Hyperix.
Aubrey told Digital Nation that “like a lot of industries” Sydney FC is “dealing with multiple different types of data” from player data, health and nutrition data, performance analytics, and ticketing.
“We have holiday clinics with over 30,000 kids entering holiday programs. With that level of access to both our internal high performance player data, and then external customer data as well, ensuring that we have a system that stands up to hacks and cyber threats is us being a good corporate citizen,” Aubrey said.
Aubrey said that if data was to be compromised “then that has a massive impact on us” - including a potential loss of trust by the various stakeholders.
“We just wanted to make sure we were best-in-class in that regard,” Aubrey said.
He added while the club was already on the path of upgrading its security approach, incidents earlier in the year such as a data breach that impacted Football Australia reinforced the need for additional focus.
The Football Australia breach “hit close to home” as it impacted some of its internal employee records, Aubrey said.
“That was very much a bit of a warning signal of what happens if you're not sitting there being best in class in this area,” he said.
“We did a bit of an audit of our of our capabilities and understand where our risks were … it was us ensuring and looking at the broader landscape of some of the incidents that have happened in sport and ensuring that as a football club, we're on the front foot.”
The next steps for the club include further internal training protocols covering security threats such as phishing alerts.
Aubrey added “this space that continues to evolve” and as “AI and as new technology creates improvements for the good, they also create opportunities for bad actors to leverage that technology as well”.
“I come from the video game space and one thing I know from that area is that you have to be endlessly diligent about threats for hacking and threats for cyber security because the technology continues to evolve,” he said.
