Whether it"s disgruntled fans or sore losers, the Australian Rugby Union (ARU) is a high-profile target for malware and hackers.

At the same time the ARU is also responsible for plenty of sensitive data including registration details for 160,000 players, which is why it recently tackled a security audit.

However, KPMG"s audit found plenty of holes, a claim that came as a surprise to its former security provider, according to ARU online services manager Greg West.

"When we told our former security provider that the KPMG audit had found holes throughout our systems, they would not believe us. And we were paying them A$150,000 a year for protection," West said, adding that the hosted security market is still immature with plenty of cowboys operating.

At the same time the ARU could actually see the traffic of customers that were being managed by their previous hosted security provider. The ARU"s computer network manager Adam Murphy believes it is likely that these customers could also read ARU messages too.

As a result the ARU has purchased a full security platform with Seccom Networks managing the network and ARU retaining control of the desktop.

The organization, which has a staff of more than 200, bought two FortiGate-300 Antivirus Firewall systems, ongoing 24x7 support from FortiProtect Network and real-time threat reporting through FortiReporter Security Analyser.

This covers antivirus, content filtering, firewall, VPN, intrusion detection and protection and traffic shaping.

West said the new solution will curb any illicit network use and prevent the downloading of large files from the Web.

"When fully implemented, the solution will reduce the cost of this data waste by 30- to 40 percent, while the full data protection service will cost 30- to 40 percent less than the previous external vendor"s charges," he said.