Amplifon Stops Millions of Threats & Policy Violations

Embracing digital innovation for decades

Founded in 1950, Amplifon has evolved from a leading Italian hearing care provider into a global force for innovative hearing care. Digital innovation has long been part of the company's core philosophy—it was the first in Italy to introduce a complete portfolio of digital products in the 1990s. 

Managing risk while scaling innovation requires security transformation, so it's no surprise that Amplifon embraced holistic zero trust security.

“Zero trust architecture offers a more agile approach to mitigate risk across an expansive operation,” said David Mallen, Global IT Network Operations Manager at Amplifon. “The zero trust approach is ideally suited to support a dynamic and changing global footprint.”

Zscaler supports a global operation with zero trust security

Operating in around 10,000 hearing care retail locations across 26 countries, Amplifon manages an expansive and diverse environment. Creating a consistent user experience for its workforce, ensuring a consistent patient experience across its retail locations, and safeguarding sensitive patient data are key priorities for the company.

Amplifon wanted a cloud native, comprehensive zero trust security solution with global reach. The company also wanted to displace outdated, legacy security appliances in favor of a more streamlined and efficient security stack.

The Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange allows Amplifon to establish and enforce consistent global security parameters while also providing the flexibility to easily customize for country-specific policies as needed.

“With the Zero Trust Exchange, we can easily implement best practice zero trust security policies at the global level, country level, or individual user level,” said Mallen. “Zscaler has lessened our reliance on legacy appliances, allowing us to maintain a more comprehensive zero trust architecture with one platform.”

Zscaler enables safer internet connections worldwide

An on-premises, legacy proxy solution no longer provided the capacity or scalability Amplifon needed to support thousands of geographically dispersed hearing care centers—or its plans for continued expansion.

Zscaler Internet Access (ZIA) enables secure, reliable, and fast connections to the internet and SaaS applications across Amplifon locations. Powered by the world’s largest inline security cloud, the Zero Trust Exchange displaces traditional proxy appliances as a more secure way to broker direct-to-internet access for users worldwide.

With cloud firewall, URL filtering, and TLS/SSL inspection built into the comprehensive Zscaler platform, multiple point products are no longer necessary. In addition, by delivering security from the cloud, as close to the user as possible, Zscaler eliminates the need to backhaul internet traffic to a data center.

For Amplifon, this means that even with a streamlined outbound security stack, they benefit from more rigorous security across their global operations, and every user benefits from a consistent and seamless connectivity experience.

“With Zscaler, we are managing safer access to the internet and public applications on a global scale. Every user can be securely connected from anywhere,” said Mallen.

Zscaler delivers zero trust access to keep patient data secure

Amplifon supports millions of patients worldwide with a team of more than 10,000 hearing care professionals, requiring secure management of highly sensitive patient data and other essential private resources.

Before Zscaler, Amplifon used client-to-site virtual private network (VPN) appliances for managing inbound security. Traditional VPN appliances inherently create a wider attack surface.

Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) provides least-privileged access to Amplifon private applications on a need-to-know basis only. Private resources are accessed directly through the Zero Trust Exchange, never exposed to the internet.

Zscaler verifies user identity, device security posture, and context before an inbound connection is made while inline traffic inspection enforces access control policies and actively prevents web attacks. This dramatically minimizes the attack surface and eliminates lateral movement if a bad actor gains access to the network.

“Private Amplifon applications—and importantly, patient data—are always protected behind the Zero Trust Exchange,” shared Mallen. “Zscaler ensures that our users have direct access to the data they need while allowing us to define and enforce access control policies on a very granular level across the globe.”

Intuitive Zscaler platform ensures consistent user experience

As the team member solely responsible for managing the Zero Trust Exchange at Amplifon, Mallen appreciates the innovative Zscaler features that allow him to simplify administration of such a comprehensive zero trust architecture.

Zscaler Digital Experience (ZDX) enables Mallen to optimize the user experience globally. Zscaler provides him with end-to-end visibility from user to application for easier monitoring across devices and networks and insights that help accelerate mean time to resolution of any issues detected.

Built-in reporting dashboards give Mallen greater visibility into platform use across Amplifon locations. These Zscaler reports synthesize a wide range of data-driven signals to provide real-time risk assessment. Using these insights, Amplifon can implement better informed access control and use policies—even tailoring specific policies to particular countries as needed.

“The Zero Trust Exchange is easy to manage, monitor, and maintain,” said Mallen. “Leveraging the global cloud infrastructure and intuitive features of the Zscaler platform lets me manage connectivity from the US to New Zealand and seamlessly adjust parameters across all locations or per individual locations. Ultimately, this ensures a consistent user experience from one side of the world to the other.” 

Leveraging Zscaler platform for safer, faster M&A integration

Amplifon has been expanding global operations through strategic acquisitions since the 1990s. Today, the company operates across EMEA, the Americas, and APAC, and corporate growth is not slowing.

Zscaler simplifies integrating acquired companies into the Amplifon security infrastructure for Mallen. The Zero Trust Exchange can automatically handle expanding volumes of traffic and users at scale without intensive manual intervention or increased risk to the corporate network.

Before Zscaler, Mallen would create a standard site-to-site VPN to connect a newly acquired call center network to the Amplifon corporate network. This process could take up to 30 days and risk a wider attack surface. On the Zero Trust Exchange, Mallen simply needs to grant new users zero trust connectivity to relevant private applications, along with installing Zscaler Client Connector™ on their devices. This new process can be completed in roughly three days—90% faster than before.

“Amplifon is growing at a rapid pace, but we are able to leverage the Zscaler solution to accelerate ongoing M&A activity,” said Mallen. “The scalability of the Zero Trust Exchange gives us flexibility to expand as a business, efficiently and with agility, while maintaining our secure edge.”

Comprehensive zero trust platform unites a global workforce

With the Zero Trust Exchange, Amplifon has achieved a more robust security edge with a lighter tech stack. In a single three-month period, Zscaler processed 7.4 billion transactions and nearly 472 TB of traffic for Amplifon, preventing 13.8 million policy violations and blocking more than 489,000 security threats.

Mallen is excited to further optimize the way Amplifon uses the Zscaler platform with additional Zscaler capabilities. Amplifon is adopting Zscaler Privileged Remote Access as a way to collaborate with external suppliers. Meanwhile, Mallen is exploring Zscaler Workload Communications to better secure Amplifon workloads in the cloud. The Zero Trust Exchange is pre-integrated to work seamlessly with other cloud service providers, so Mallen is also looking to add additional cloud-based security solutions to complement the company's evolving zero trust approach.

With Zscaler, Amplifon can continue to expand its global presence with greater efficiency and less risk while Mallen works to ensure a secure, consistent user experience for staff and patients everywhere. “Zscaler powers a unified, global security infrastructure and simplifies management of rural policies,” concluded Mallen. “With Zscaler, no matter where in the world we operate, we are all speaking the same language when it comes to zero trust security.”