Sport

Australian football club Case Study

Marking a solid defence for an Australian football club’s network

HPE Aruba Networking
ClearPass
Guest Wi-Fi

At a glance

Since the late 1800s, an Australian football club has fielded teams in the AFL as one of the longest-running sports associations in Australia. They initially approached Affinity Blue seeking to enhance the security of wired and wireless networks on its home stadium, as well as in its corporate offices and training grounds.

The situation

Weak cybersecurity across guest networks, making corporate functions vulnerable to breaches from high volumes of guest users

The solution

HPE Aruba Networking ClearPass Policy Manager for network access control, deployed on-premise and integrated fully with existing routers and switches

The results

Robust security with minimal uplift needed from IT and no integration issues, creating room to focus on improving the digital guest experience

The situation

Before enlisting Affinity Blue’s help, the football club had only installed basic security for its corporate networks. However, those networks constantly play host to sizable numbers of guests visiting the club, from broadcast crews to partner organisations, significantly increasing the likelihood of a breach if any guest brought with them a compromised device.

“A public organisation like the football club will always have lots of people around the environment who aren’t employees,” said Simon Hayward, Managing Director and co-founder of Affinity Blue. “The club accurately identified this foot traffic as one potential vector for cyber risks, and although they couldn’t reduce the footfall, they could definitely beef up security and access control.”

The solution

The football club eventually selected HPE Aruba Networking ClearPass Policy Manager, implemented by Affinity Blue, for wired and wireless network access control. The club had originally considered another solution from the same vendor as its existing wired and wireless hardware, but were convinced by HPE Aruba Networking ClearPass’ vendor-agnostic compatibility. As it was designed to be fully compatible with any existing switches or routers, the installation was smooth and simple, with the Affinity Blue team drawing on their extensive experience with HPE Aruba Networking products to balance product compatibility with user confidence for the football club.

Before the actual implementation, Affinity Blue carried out comprehensive tests and discovery work on the football club’s network. Those tests revealed that despite the club’s preference for a public cloud deployment, installing HPE Aruba Networking ClearPass using on-premise virtual appliances would offer superior performance and reliability without disrupting existing configurations.

“HPE Aruba Networking ClearPass installations have become second-nature to us, but we still make a point never to skip rigorous requirements gathering and discovery work” Hayward noted. “You never know what you’ll find that can optimise the end results, or save the customer a lot of pain further down the line.”

The results

Strong engagement with the football club’s engineers throughout the process helped ensure a smooth implementation and seamless handover of the first phase of the project. Affinity Blue is now in the process of rolling out the solution to the entire corporate network after positive feedback from IT and end-users alike.

“We’ve heard from the club that getting connected through HPE Aruba Networking ClearPass is easier than even an open Wi-Fi network,” Hayward said. “On the IT side, they’ve told us that the policy manager has integrated well with all other device management solutions, and tightened access control without much uplift needed on their side. That leaves them with more headspace to focus on improving the overall guest experience through technology, and more confidence to sustain or increase visits to their sites as part of advancing the club’s reach.”