How CrowdStrike Protects SRO America

Photo: CrowdStrike Racing

While many series employ sponsorship agreements which are often one-way transactions, SRO Motorsports Group and CrowdStrike have broken the mold by utilizing the world’s leading cybersecurity company’s resources to keep its own critical data safe.

The partnership, which began in 2018, has grown into a multifaceted venture in recent years, with CrowdStrike becoming the Official Internet and Cloud Security Provider for all SRO America championships.

According to SRO America President and CEO Greg Gill, the cybersecurity firm has given both its domestic and global operations peace of mind wherever in the world its staff are based.

SRO is utilizing CrowdStrike’s Falcon cloud-native software platform in its staff’s endpoint computers to help protect the business and financial records of series participants, as well as digital assets and data, such as its proprietary Balance of Performance system.

“What’s really great about working with them is they are at a global protection level with major corporations like Amazon Web Services,” Gill told Sportscar365.

“For a small business like ourselves, they have been really great working with us and recognizing our needs.

“What’s helpful is that we’re a global business as well. We have to protect business information in Australia, Asia, Europe and North America. 

“What I really appreciate about CrowdStrike is that they have offices around the world, so if we have a question and we’re in different time zones, it’s not that we have to wait until somebody in California wakes up, it’s literally that they’re protecting us globally. We have peace of mind that our data is protected 24/7/365.

“That’s something very important for us as a global business.”

Photo: Brian Cleary/SRO

CrowdStrike has ensured data protection and threat-level analysis to a variety of companies, from small businesses with remote-based operations such as SRO America to Fortune 500 companies and even governments around the world. 

In fact, CrowdStrike is the pioneer of the first Security Cloud, which provides comprehensive visibility and protection at scale for every endpoint and workload. 

Powered by its proprietary Threat Graph, the Falcon Platform correlates over 5 trillion endpoint-related events per week in real time from across the globe.

“In many global work environments, the critical elements of protection are internal assets of the operation of the business,” said Shawn Henry, CrowdStrike’s Chief Security Officer and president of CrowdStrike Services.

“But the unique thing with SRO is the broad array of information retained by the series regarding drivers, teams, OEMs, sponsors, the series itself, data, plus digital assets of video and more.  

“As we all know on any given race we have over 100 teams participating with perhaps an average of seven to eight crew per car.  

“We are dealing with successful entrepreneurs, and self made executives, team members, and more personnel, keeping records for payments and expenses along with in depth background information.”

Photo: Brian Cleary/SRO

Henry, who co-hosts CrowdStrike and AWS’ executive CXO Summits for cybersecurity leaders at select race weekends, said they’ve been able to build a “very unique” working relationship with SRO America that extends beyond market awareness.

It includes the rolling out of “toolboxes” with SRO that can be utilized throughout the motorsports industry to improve threat aversion practices of the series, OEMs and partners.

“From a sophistication level, CrowdStrike’s threat-level analysis is one of the most robust offerings on the market,” said Gill.

“We’re not quite as many data points as the Mercedes Formula 1 team, but we are still at that same level of constantly analyzing BoP data across a wide variety of tracks globally with a wide variety of platforms.

“We cannot afford to have any downtime. We’re in the same boat as anybody else.

“We all deal with the same level of phishing and social engineering attempts and deal with the constant pressure that way. So, we have to partner with a group that’s not only protecting us but giving us advance warning on some of the latest things to be aware of and how we’re protected.”

Gill continued: “It’s really great that way and has allowed me to sleep better at night in a global business knowing that I’m protected 24/7.

“I couldn’t be happier with the partnership.

“And, we’ve been able to tell other companies, manufacturers and retail businesses that this is a great relationship to have and a company that not only believes and supports motorsports but has this robust platform that’s applicable across the world because of how it’s deployed.”

While currently fully integrated in SRO America, CrowdStrike plans to expand Falcon’s footprint as SRO’s diverse needs grow, globally. As Falcon is a fully cloud-native solution, endpoints and workloads are protected wherever in the world they are.

Photo: Brian Cleary/SRO

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John