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Zscaler™ Enhances Security and User Access for Nuffield Health: A Case Study
Technology Category
- Cybersecurity & Privacy - Application Security
- Cybersecurity & Privacy - Cloud Security
Applicable Industries
- Healthcare & Hospitals
- Telecommunications
Use Cases
- Traffic Monitoring
- Transportation Simulation
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
In 2015, Nuffield Health, a UK-based healthcare organization, was preparing to undertake several projects aimed at improving productivity, efficiency, and patient services, while enhancing user experience across its corporate office, hospitals, and gyms. These projects included a migration to Microsoft Office 365 and the introduction of TrakCare, a new electronic health record application. However, the success of these projects was heavily dependent on the performance of Nuffield Health's network, which needed to secure sensitive patient and personal data flowing in and out of its facilities. At the time, Nuffield Health had only one MPLS network link running at 30 MB at each of its sites, which was insufficient for the upcoming projects and the required resiliency. Furthermore, 60% of its traffic was already destined for the internet rather than its data centers, a percentage that would increase significantly once Office 365 was deployed. The team realized that it needed more bandwidth and more resiliency in its network, and it needed to consider the cost and latency resulting from backhauling all that traffic through the data center. It also had to determine the best way to secure all that internet-bound traffic.
About The Customer
Nuffield Health is a UK-based healthcare organization with no shareholders, investing all of its income back into its vision to build a healthier nation. It does this through outstanding day-to-day services in its family of 31 award-winning hospitals, 112 fitness and wellbeing clubs, health care clinics, and more than 200 workplace wellbeing services, and through its flagship programmes to support communities by widening access. The organization has been working for 60 years to make the United Kingdom fitter, healthier, happier, and stronger, all for the public benefit. It has a user count of 22,000 and uses Zscaler Internet Access™.
The Solution
Nuffield Health began researching options and designing its new network, and eventually decided on an SD-WAN solution from Silver Peak. Investing in SD-WAN provided much more room for innovation and flexibility. However, with traffic going direct to the internet and not going through the data center, security became a major concern. Given the number of sites that Nuffield Health is responsible for and with the amount of traffic it expected to be destined for the internet, a cloud security solution made the most sense. Nuffield Health was looking for a solution that could not only protect its critical patient data, but also easily integrate with its SD-WAN deployment. Nuffield Health selected the Zscaler Internet Access service, which examines the Nuffield traffic destined for the internet over all ports and protocols, including SSL-encrypted traffic. It also enables policies to follow users, regardless of location or device, providing security for Nuffield’s 16,000 staff around the UK and an additional 6,000 medical consultants. Nuffield Health also counts on Zscaler cloud-delivered security to protect data coming from its 31 hospitals and 112 fitness clubs.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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