The French Handball Federation manages a considerable volume of data: licenses, match schedules, results, administrative documents. For several seasons, the Gesthand tool and its extraction module have centralized these flows for clubs, committees, and leagues. The platform extraction.gesthand.net allows exporting CSV or XLS files containing the necessary information for the daily operations of these organizations. However, recent developments, particularly in cybersecurity, are profoundly changing the way clubs access and utilize this data.
Gesthand Two-Factor Authentication: What Clubs Need to Change Practically
One of the most significant changes in recent seasons concerns access security. The mandatory activation of two-factor authentication (2FA) for all Gesthand users (clubs, committees, leagues) fundamentally alters data extraction habits.
Until recently, many clubs operated with a shared generic account among the treasurer, secretary, and license manager. This mode of operation is now non-compliant. The password policy now requires a length of 13 to 16 characters, prohibits the terms “handball” or “hand,” and prevents the sharing of the same email address and password among multiple accounts of the same club.
For a club with a few dozen licensed members managed by volunteers, this represents a real organizational effort. Each person authorized to perform an extraction must have their own identifier, a compliant password, and a two-factor authentication device. The goal is clear: to track who accesses the data and limit risks in case of a compromised account.
Clubs that were used to entrusting the Gesthand extraction for FFHandball to a single person with shared access must rethink their internal organization. This involves training several volunteers, documenting procedures, and managing access rotation in case of changes in the board.
FFHandball Cyberattack and Club Data: Open Questions
The strengthening of security did not happen by chance. Attacks claimed by the ZeroBytes group targeted the data handled via Gesthand: names, contact details, license numbers, identity documents, medical certificates. Cybercriminals claimed that over a million members were affected, a figure that has not been officially confirmed.
This episode raises several questions for clubs that use the extraction module daily. The first concerns the responsibility of clubs regarding GDPR. When a secretary exports a CSV file containing the contact details of all licensed members, this file often circulates via email, remains on a personal computer, or ends up in a Google Drive folder without access restrictions.
The available data does not allow conclusions about the exact extent of the leak or the corrective measures deployed club by club. However, the event highlighted a gap between the sensitivity of the information extracted from Gesthand and the actual storage practices within the associations.
- Extraction files contain sensitive personal data (identity, address, medical certificates) subject to GDPR
- Most clubs do not have a retention or deletion policy for old exports
- Volunteers handling these files generally have not received any training in data protection
- Sharing files via personal messaging remains a common practice, without encryption
Gesthand CSV Export and Integration with Third-Party Tools: A Still Manual Process
The Gesthand extraction module generates files in CSV and XLS formats. These formats are universal, but their use by clubs reveals a largely manual operation.
Some third-party platforms, like Kalisport, offer direct import of Gesthand files to feed calendars and results on the club’s website. The procedure exists and works, but it requires human intervention at each update: downloading the file from extraction.gesthand.net, converting it if necessary, and then importing it into the target tool.
Conversely, developers have created scraping tools to automate the retrieval of public data from the FFHandball website. The existence of these initiatives shows a real need for automation that the official extraction module does not yet cover. Clubs and leagues managing several dozen teams lose significant time in these manual transfer operations.
Field feedback varies on this point. Some clubs believe that the current process is sufficient for their needs. Others, more structured or operating in regional leagues with a high volume of competitions, demand an official API that would allow direct connection of Gesthand to their management tools, without having to download files.
Gesthand Modernization and Dematerialization: Where Does the Federal Project Stand?
The FFHandball has communicated about a goal of total dematerialization via Gesthand, broken down into seven modules. The new version promises a rethought ergonomics and expanded accessibility for different user profiles. Regional leagues like Bourgogne-Franche-Comté or Pays de la Loire relay these developments each season.
The project is progressing, but the gap between federal announcements and the reality experienced by clubs deserves to be noted. Mandatory two-factor authentication, for example, represents a security improvement but complicates access for volunteers who only use the tool a few times a season.
- The shift to 2FA protects data but complicates access for occasional volunteers
- Export formats remain flat files (CSV/XLS) without native interconnection with common management tools
- The security of extracted data still largely relies on the individual practices of clubs, not on a technical framework imposed by the federation
The modernization of Gesthand is not limited to a redesign of the interface. It involves rethinking the entire chain, from data extraction to their use and destruction. For clubs, the challenge is not so much mastering a new tool as it is to adapt their volunteer organization to security and compliance requirements that continue to rise. The extraction module remains the gateway to this data. The question is whether clubs have the resources to pass through this gate properly.
