What the NFL's Playbook Security Can Teach Small Businesses About Protecting Their Data
Thought Leadership Data Security April 2026 · 8 min read NFL teams have spent decades treating information like a competitive weapon worth protecting at almost any cost. Spies disguised as priests. Remote-wipe tablets. $25,000 fines for lost documents. Meanwhile most small businesses email sensitive files with no encryption. There's a lesson here. In 1950, Green Bay Packers head coach Gene Ronzani was so convinced the Chicago Bears were spying on his practices that he would only show players drawings of plays for ten seconds — not long enough for any mole in the crowd to memorize them. When an airplane flew overhead, he'd stop practice entirely and wait for it to pass. "He was really paranoid," a former Packer recalled. "He used to always say, 'Bears spies are around here somewhere. I know they are.'" Seventy-five years later, NFL teams are still treating their information with the sam...