According to Steve Fell, head of ICT with Everton, being a premier league club and a household name in the UK means that Everton is a prime target for spam and malware.
The spam and malware emails, he explained, are usually delivered constantly in the guise of marketing pitches and other personal communications. And, he said, as few as one percent of the football club's emails are legitimate business messages.
Everton, he went on to say, opted for Webroot's IT security technology to replace the increasingly more expensive hardware required to cope with the huge growth in spam and malware emails being received.
"Also, some forms of communication simply couldn't get through, and if those emails are for the chairman, that clearly isn't good", he said.
"Ensuring the flow of legitimate emails is key, especially during the player transfer season when an extraordinary amount of traffic comes through on the last day. Now, I'm delighted to say - the email queues have disappeared", he added.
Mark Tickle, Webroot's managing director of EMEA operations, said that it's good to know that Everton has seen immediate IT security benefits as a result of implementing his firm's email security service.
"Our premier placement as the software-as-a-service of choice amongst the football community is becoming a permanent fixture. Everton joins The Football League, The Premier League and many other leading football clubs, as a Webroot customer", he said.
"This is evidence that our high security levels and excellent spam filtering accuracy provide the required protection levels for such high-profile brands", he added.
Interestingly, Fell said that the new IT security technology solving spam and malware email problems has allowed the football club to improve its customer service levels, as it gets a lot of emails requesting tickets for football games.
"If any of these are blocked, like they used to be, we'd be looking at possible lost revenue. Customer service is paramount and now we are confident that we capture every customer enquiry and don't look unresponsive - an important part of preserving our brand image", he said.