How Symantec Tuned-up Security for a Formula One Icon

In the high-octane world of Formula 1, where split-second decisions and cutting-edge technology can make the difference between winning and losing, the need for robust cybersecurity controls has never been more crucial.

 Williams Racing is one of the storied companies in Formula One racing with 16 World Championships and 114 race victories to its name. In years past, cybersecurity at Williams had been the responsibility of the IT team, which used Symantec technology to provide cybersecurity protection.

But as F1’s popularity boomed over the last half decade, Formula 1 teams like Williams Racing have had to deal with new threats from cyber-attackers. As the threat landscape broadened, cyber criminals, hackers, and even script kiddies posed growing threats to their troves of race telemetry, performance metrics, and strategic information.

With the arrival of Harry Wilson as Head of Information Security last year, the company redoubled efforts to get the most out of the high-performance solutions delivered by Symantec to protect Williams’ business critical data and intellectual property. 

Growing Threats

Guarding all the company’s data against theft or leakage is a make-or-break proposition.  

“We need to be secure,” said Harry, “In a sport where data is not only a valuable asset but also a competitive advantage, our cybersecurity strategy is not just about protecting information; it is about safeguarding our performance, reputation and the trust of our fans, sponsors and partners.”

In addition to reviewing and reinforcing cybersecurity measures, Harry noted that Williams Racing needs to keep a remote workforce secure and productive as their teams participate in competitions held all around the world.  

“There are 200 to 300 sensors on a car and that data is streamed in real time,” he said. “If those systems go down (because of a cyberattack), that can be the difference between winning and losing a Grand Prix.” 

Partnership with Symantec 

Williams Racing is undergoing a top-to-bottom business transformation having been acquired by Dorilton Capital in 2020. With Dorilton Capital’s backing, the team is addressing years of under-investment – including cybersecurity and IT. 

“Security was almost a pastime,” Harry recalled. “If we had infrastructure engineers or software developers who were interested and had time to do it, then they would. But we didn’t have dedicated security administrators looking after the set of Symantec tools.” 

So, when Harry and Chris Hicks, Williams Racing’s Information Security Engineer, came aboard, one of the first things that they did was to review the configuration of the suite of Symantec security systems. 

The review revealed that some security systems had become stale – for instance, newer features such as Symantec’s Endpoint’s Adaptive Protection were available but had not had the policy configurations to enable them. The arrival of the new team offered an immediate opportunity to rationalize, refresh and enable new security policies.   

“We inherited a number of Symantec systems, but they had been under-utilized and not tapped for their full potential,” Harry said.

Step Two was to collaborate with Symantec to come up with a plan to erase all that technical debt by updating the company’s systems, cleaning up web security policies and ensuring coverage for all of the company’s endpoints with the deployment of Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP). 

The resulting infrastructure struck the right balance between security and usability as well as speed and reliability. Although the Williams Racing cybersecurity team was small, it was able to punch above its weight by virtue of deploying Symantec’s technology capabilities. Consider the following: 

• Adaptive Protection: Williams Racing enhanced the protection of its workstations by using advanced security features available in SES Complete. 

• Operational advantages thanks to the simplification of agent deployment with combined endpoint protection and web traffic steering (Cloud SWG). 

• Reports generated by Symantec technology that allow the Williams Racing cybersecurity team to easily understand any changes or potential risks in the threat landscape. 

• The SES Complete console allows Williams Racing security team to track whether endpoints have protection installed and know whether they are up to date. 

Simplicity Makes a Big Difference 

“We have teams traveling all over the world, we regularly have third-party contractors join us,” Harry said. “We need to get them set up with IT equipment quickly. We now deploy a single agent that covers endpoint and web protection in a matter of minutes with all our policies already inherited through the web platform.”

What’s more, a single agent makes it easy to deploy security to protect both endpoint and network/web activity. By combining the endpoint and cloud SWG agents, the resulting consolidation has helped Williams Racing register major improvements when it comes to tracking and monitoring. 

“Now it's much easier on our device build process,” said Harry, who recalled the time when the company relied upon separate installations to generate separate reports. “We've now got a single agent for installation that's just one less build step than was previously required. When we've got remote contractors who need to urgently come in and work on the car or do some trackside analysis for us, we deploy a single agent. It's just half the previous workload.”

That dramatic reduction in security operational workload affords Harry and his team the head space to strategically tackle the most pressing cyber threats facing Williams Racing by taking advantage of the other innovations Symantec has to offer.

 “Security when done well is super-simple,” he said.