The British Horseracing Authority, also known simply as the BHA, is responsible for the governance, administration and regulation of horseracing and the wider horseracing industry in Britain. The BHA leads on the development and growth of racing, and prioritises the health and welfare of the sport’s participants.

Business & Technical Objectives

With approximately 1,500 fixtures running 364 days a year, the demands on the British Horseracing Authority’s voice and data networks are clear. With an ageing outer perimeter and increased demands on integrity, the BHA had multiple project objectives. These included replacing the existing firewalls due to product limitations, and providing race stewards and officials with an easy-to-use yet highly secure mechanism to connect to the BHA systems on race days.

Solutions

GGR proposed a perimeter security solution integrated with a secure remote access solution, using Cisco ASA firewalls and the ASAs SSL VPN remote access feature. Cisco ASAs provide strong perimeter security whilst being easy to manage. RSA SecurID key fob two factor user authentication was implemented to provide a strong authentication mechanism for the race stewards, officials and other home worker staff.

GGR also installed Websense, a system that provides industry-leading reporting tools to give complete visibility of internet usage, together with the most comprehensive web filtering database

The Results

BHA gained peace of mind that their data and that of their clients was protected, together with their reputation as the regulatory body of British horseracing. The project was completed outside of working hours so there was very little disruption to business continuity. GGR were able to provide bestof-breed security products and also enable the BHA to have complete visibility across their network.

“The project has been extremely successful and GGR’s service, knowledge and ability to deliver have been outstanding, second to none. GGR have delivered a complete turnkey solution coming in on budget and meeting, if not exceeding, the key objectives the project was scoped to deliver. Their approach and model allowed much of the project to be delivered out of key business hours, limiting the disruption to our business while still completing the challenging objectives set within the specification.”
Steve Gibson, ICT Manager British Horseracing Authority