Companies synonymous with success: Ferrari, Envision Virgin Racing and Kaspersky Lab

For a brand to become a household name across the globe, it takes the organization behind it to outperform its opponents for a considerable length of time. More so than many other industries, this is a mindset held at dear in the spirit of motorsport.

The knowledge, technology, and craftsmanship which powers teams like Scuderia Ferrari in Formula 1 and Envision Virgin Racing in Formula E has made these brands synonymous with performance and power.

The former is one of the most successful teams in the competition’s esteemed heritage, the latter, a frontrunning pioneer of its innovative new direction; knowing what’s around the next chicane, on and off the track, is vital for maintaining those reputations.

At the very epoch of Formula-grade motoring technology, the data flowing to and from the car at every moment of testing, practice, qualifying, and racing, represents priceless and sensitive digital information, all of which demands the highest standards of security and protection.

It’s no surprise, therefore, that when these teams were looking to protect their intellectual property – the lifeblood of the team’s performance – they selected Kaspersky Lab after a long and careful appraisal of all the cybersecurity companies on the market.

“Kaspersky Lab’s enterprise solutions reflects the security demands of today’s enterprise businesses, creating a complete cybersecurity platform that combines fully scalable protection capabilities for physical, virtual and cloud-based systems,” said Antonia Casamassima, CIO of Ferrari S.p.A.

Among its roster of global partners and sponsors, Kaspersky Lab’s challenge for Ferrari and Envision Virgin Racing in particular was to integrate seamlessly into existing, complex technological infrastructure, which includes various high-end industrial technologies, mobile devices, servers and endpoints.

During this phase, the cybersecurity firm conducted deep analysis of malware and threat instances, which were missed by both Ferrari and Envision Virgin Racing’s legacy providers. This included up to six months of testing and benchmarking – tackling the specific performance and latency challenges specific to each team. “We worked very closely with them to ensure we could install around their existing setup without impacting on productivity or sensitive systems,” recalls Kaspersky’s Chairman and CEO, Eugene Kaspersky.

At Formula racing level, the challenge is always to keep the security footprint light: provide ironclad protection, but let car and pit lane systems perform at their best. Only in this way can the teams exploit every last ounce of performance from their cars.

On a practical basis, the amounts of data flowing on race day between car and pit crew runs to many GB per second – data which is used to run multiple real-time simulations, designed to ensure maximum performance. Protecting this data, with a minimum of computing & resource overhead, was a challenge that only Kaspersky Lab could master.

The company’s solutions provide effective security from cyber threats at all layers– endpoints, engineering workstations, network connections – without impacting on operational continuity and the consistency in performance needed at the high end of motorsport.

Like all great partnerships, those forged between Kaspersky Lab and the teams of Ferrari and Envision Virgin Racing are built on shared values and vision: innovation, cutting-edge technology and a desire to succeed at the highest level.

“Kaspersky Lab understands what it takes to win races,” said Sylvain Filippi, Chief Technology Officer at Envision Virgin Racing. “Now, the application of their world class endpoint security technology to protect all our devices as part of our new IT infrastructure will further improve our chances of taking more chequered flags.”

To learn more about how Kaspersky Lab brought its protection systems to the world of motorsport, download the Ferrari and Envision Virgin Racing case studies. And find out how Kaspersky can bring security to your enterprise with the levels of fastidious protection suitable for every world-beating team, get in touch with a representative today.