Founded in 1878 as St Domingo's, the club became known as Everton a year later and in 1888 the Merseyside team was one of the 12 founders of the Football League. Success came quickly and in 1891 Everton won its first League title. Its first FA Cup success came in 1906 and more recently won what was the First Division in 1987, its ninth title.

Today, Everton FC the business has an annual turnover of nearly £50 million and 280 permanent employees.

As a high-profile football club, Everton's IT team have a tough challenge ensuring that the club's systems are protected from hackers and viruses at all times. 'It would be scandalous if viruses or malware were found on the network at a company as prestigious as ours,' explains Steve Etheridge, head of IT at Everton FC. 'Obviously because we are such a high profile organisation, our IT networks are a potential target.'

Half of its 280 permanent employees have PC access with 75% ' between 80 and 90 internet-enabled employees. To ensure that these employees do not abuse their access privileges or accidentally let a virus into the club's IT systems, Everton has a clear network usage policy in place and separates its internet users into four groups, each with differing internet access requirements.

'We have always tried to be proactive in our security strategy concerning Web access and anti-virus software so we have tended to be pretty tight regarding network security, downloads and so on,' explains Etheridge. 'So far we have been fortunate and have never had a virus outbreak, but we are a big target and we have to remember this.'

Everton previously used an alternative Web filtering solution to control employee access to certain websites but found it difficult to use, control and manage. 'We had issues because the application would sometimes stop working and users would have free access to any website. This eroded our confidence in the application,' explains Etheridge. 'We also never knew when it was going to crash next, so we had to continually monitor it and check that it was operating smoothly.'

Everton was also prevented from upgrading its Web filtering software because newer versions of the product were no longer compatible with the Windows NT4 operating system. 'It was also not terribly intuitive or easy to configure,' adds Etheridge.

In common with most football clubs, Everton FC does a lot of work with the local community. One of the projects it is involved with is its 'Extra Time' study centre ' an initiative developed between the Department for Education, Local Education Authority, and Everton FC ' which enable local school children to come to Goodison Park to study as part of their school curriculum.

However, staff at the study centre were unhappy letting the children use technology, including access to the internet, without an application in place to control internet usage.

Given its dissatisfaction with its current Web filtering software Everton decided to investigate alternative providers of Web filtering and monitoring software to install at the study centre. One of the products recommended was Websense so Everton undertook a trial of Websense Enterprise 5.5.

'There were various things that we wanted from the new system,' explains Etheridge. ' Including performance, ease of use, value for money, and flexibility regarding integration with different Windows operating system as we were planning a major migration during the coming year.'

In February 2004, the club purchased a licence for 50 users in the study centre and began an extensive trial of Websense Enterprise 5.5 in the study centre. Being able to test the software in an environment where there was no existing Web monitoring application meant that Everton could see how the software worked in a 'live' situation and identify immediate benefits regarding control of web usage.

'This enabled us to gain a better understanding of the product and when our existing contract with our previous supplier ended in July 2004, we went out and purchased a licence for 100 users on Everton's main network as well,' says Etheridge. 'We would normally have trialed two to three options, but because we had already been able to test the product in the Study Centre we were confident to forgo any extensive testing in our own network.'

The installation of Websense Enterprise only took Etheridge and his team a couple of hours to complete and he reports that the club has not had one issue since then with viruses or malware entering the network. 'It is one of those pieces of software that gives you no grief,' he says. 'We had an almost immediate return on investment because as soon as Websense was installed in the Study Centre, the teachers felt more comfortable allowing the children to use the internet facilities. It is a challenge in any organisation not to have the network littered with various unsuitable downloads, but in an environment where there are children, it is absolutely vital to prevent this from happening. Similarly within our own business network, we now have a robust, stable and highly configurable solution which does exactly what it says on the box.'

Now Everton FC can control its employees' Internet access without intruding into their work activities, which is something Etheridge sees as key. 'IT should make people's lives easier; as soon as it is perceived as being an obstruction we stop people doing their job properly,' he says. 'One of the challenges at Everton is that we are always working against the clock, but we need to balance the ability to help people do their job with having the correct controls in place. Essentially we needed security without bureaucracy and unnecessary administrative overhead. We now have that.'

The club found Websense Enterprise extremely easy to configure. This also has the benefit of lowering the cost of administering and managing the system. 'The system is very intuitive,' claims Etheridge. 'There is a lot of inbuilt functionality to set filtering categories and the potential to modify the system to give various kinds of access makes it very easy to use.'

Ultimately, Websense Enterprise brings peace of mind to Everton FC. Previously Etheridge was the only administrator of the previous system since it was tricky to configure and required constant monitoring. Websense is so easy to use that management of the system was quickly devolved to other members of the IT team.

Shortly after deploying Websense Enterprise, Everton decided to extend its security to the network level and evaluated Websense's Client Policy Manager (CPM), its new security tool that prevents unauthorised applications from executing on the network. This is particularly suitable for mobile employees that might take their laptop home ' outside the corporate LAN ' and contract a virus, which then infects every other PC when the laptop is reconnected to the IT network back in the office.

'We use one of the market leading anti virus products to protect our network and while this has been very successful we have a very real challenge when it comes to mobile clients,' says Etheridge. 'Viruses are getting more aggressive and I wanted to be able to exercise some proactive control over the use of mobile technology. We needed a solution that would protect our equipment when in use both on and off line. At the end of the day, it is no good being ultra efficient in the office environment when laptops could then have unlimited access outside.'

Following a 30-day trial of CPM on eight laptops, completed in late December 2004, Everton FC purchased a 50-user license and extended the rollout. 'The results were very promising' says Etheridge. 'We felt this definitely added an important extra dimension to our existing protection. So far we have found it easy to implement and configure and have not received any feedback about it negatively affecting performance in any way.'

Again, the challenge was to balance functionality against configurability. We did not want something that was unwieldy and intrusive but we did have a very real need for control in this area.

Like the main Websense product we have found CPM intuitive and easy to administer. The use of groups and categories facilitates the assignment of privileges and control mechanisms. In addition there are some great spin-offs like the hardware and software inventory management, which will help us to address not only potential security issues but also technical and legal ones regarding the proper use of software.

As a high-profile football club, Everton FC faces a greater challenge than most companies in protecting its brand. 'We are a potential target, so we have to make sure our IT systems are squeaky clean,' says Etheridge. 'Being a football club is a responsibility and the responsibility applies not only on the field but off it as well.'