The members of DHPA are among the largest, most innovative cloud and hosting providers in the Netherlands. After its founding in 2006, WorldStream has experienced significant growth, especially since 2016 when the company started offering ‘unmanaged’ dedicated servers with a fixed price for high bandwidth. This proposition proved to be internationally appealing and also resulted in the enormous size of the WorldStream network backbone – with a current bandwidth capacity of more than 10Tbps.

According to WorldStream, this scale requires increasing responsibility when it comes to facilitating the fight against cybercrime. WorldStream expects to be able to do more in this respect in conjunction with other companies within the hosting industry.

Ruud Alaerds, director of DHPA, on the membership of WorldStream said: “WorldStream is a very interesting player in the Dutch and international markets. It is an innovative IaaS-hoster which is growing fast and is very competitive. With bundled hosting solutions and customization regarding dedicated servers, an anti-DDoS service, network solutions, colocation, and their soon to be launched global SDN, this company knows how to distinguish itself internationally and in the Netherlands. WorldStream joins DHPA because it feels strongly related to the principles set out izn the DHPA code of conduct and wants to work together with DHPA. We therefore welcome WorldStream to the DHPA network and look forward to this cooperation”.

90,000 servers, R&D department, SDN, anti-DDoS

As an Infrastructure-as-a-Service hosting provider WorldStream serves customers worldwide with its unmanaged IaaS hosting solutions. It does this from two own data centers located in Naaldwijk, near Rotterdam and The Hague. The total capacity of WorldStream’s largest and newest data center was doubled to 20,000 servers in 2019. In addition, plans are being drawn up for the construction of an entirely new data center near the two existing locations, allowing the total capacity to grow further to 90,000 servers in the next few years.

WorldStream has its own R&D department from which a new anti-DDoS platform has recently emerged with a layered architecture based on intelligent clustering technology – to repel large DDoS attacks, but also the smaller and more advanced DDoS attacks that often go by unnoticed.

In addition, at the end of the first quarter of 2020 a proprietary SDN on top of the global WorldStream network backbone under the name of WorldStream Elastic Network will be launched. This software-defined network aims to provide extensive data center, network and cybersecurity functionality at locations where the network has backbone Points-of-Presence. For SMEs and enterprises in the Netherlands and internationally, this offers possibilities to flexibly set up hybrid IT infrastructures including cloud in an easily accessible manner.

Fighting cybercrime: sharing knowledge and innovations

Wouter van Zwieten, Planning & Control Director at WorldStream, is enthusiastic about the DHPA membership: “In line with the strong growth of WorldStream and the expanding capacity of our global network backbone, we are dedicating more and more resources to supporting agencies involved in the fight against cybercrime. The DHPA Foundation makes an important contribution to curbing cybercrime at a national level and for the hosting industry, for example by developing codes of conduct for its members and sharing knowledge, innovations and experiences. WorldStream also has knowledge and innovation to contribute in this area and we want to talk about this at industry level”.

“For example, we have recently developed an ‘IPTV abuse enforcement’ software tool, with which rightholders can intervene independently when it appears that TV pirates are active within our network,” says Van Zwieten. “We also have close contacts with investigative bodies and tightly structured abuse processes with specific time limits to take content offline if necessary. Given our current size and the importance we attach to a clean internet, the time is ripe for a DHPA membership. We are pleased with the admission by DHPA and look forward to a fruitful cooperation.”

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These findings are supported by The Business Grammar Report that was commissioned by leaders in self-service data analytics, which surveyed over 500 European business leaders. This study found that 30% of its participants consider data and analytics skills to be the most important skill when hiring a potential employee. Only 28% viewed multilingualism in the same respect.

Data proficiency within the business world

These findings have identified a shift within the business world, in terms of how data is managed. Alteryx’s research found that only 15% of European business leaders across five countries leave data analysis to an IT department. In addition, half of UK businesses are currently teaching their employees to be data proficient.

In France and Germany almost half of their businesses (in each country) are doing the same. Four out of five European business leaders felt that data analytics should be a compulsory part of all MBA programmes. In the Netherlands and Germany, 88% and 87%, respectively agreed with this view.

Stuart Wilson, VP EMEA Alteryx Inc, stated that “it makes sense to equip every business analyst with self-service tools that allow them to ask questions of their data”. . 42% of those who were surveyed admitted that decisions on data accessibility still lay with their IT team. He admitted that any business analyst who is data proficient could expect a 36% higher salary than someone who is not. 30% allowed their departmental leaders responsibility over decisions.

Andy Cotgreave, a Senior Technical Evangelist at Tableau admitted superior businesses are those that “educate their teams” on data specific matters. French IT teams still take the lead on data management and analysis decisions, according to 51% of respondents. Yet, in Denmark this statistic is much lower, 31%.

Challenges with self-service data analysis

However, problems arise when businesses begin to manage their own data. Incomplete data is one of the main problems that face business leaders. 41% of those who were surveyed agreed with this view. In Germany 53% reported this issue as their main obstacle.

Edited from press release by Ruby Arenson

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The campaign website has had over 100,000 unique visitors and 53,381 registered players, resulting in over 1042 applications to fill 110 vacancies with the Dutch Police.

Gamification of the recruitment process

Steam.nl, an award-winning employer branding agency based in Amsterdam, is the creative brain behind #Crimediggers, the online gaming experience created for the Dutch National Police force. Including a rich narrative of interactive experiences, the game is part of a recruitment campaign aimed at finding skilled IT professionals wanting to pursue a career in criminal investigative work.

“In a tight labour market, we were challenged with finding a target audience not aware of the opportunities a career in digital forensics could offer” said Hans Kroonen, CEO at Steam. “We had a clear vision of how we wanted to engage with this audience, and knew we needed a complex and multi-faceted gaming application to be at the core of a more traditional marketing drive”.

Supported by Docker-based container architecture

Steam used Cloud 66, a London-based tech startup to build and deploy Docker-based container architecture, consisting of several integrated polyglot applications. “The ease of using Cloud 66 to build and deploy #Crimediggers was instrumental to creating a multi-layered, interactive app experience” said Kroonen. Different stages of the game had potential recruits interact with image-based evidence, decode forensics data, solve cryptic hacker alerts and combine their findings with other players to advance through each level.

Digital skills needed in national police forces

“The evolving threats and forensics requirements of a connected world, mean we have a real need for digital skills to help us combat crime,” said Barend Frans, Head of the Digital Forensics Team in Amsterdam for the Dutch National Police. “This initiative was all about finding the next generation of digital and financial investigation experts. Creating such a sophisticated technical deployment in support of the campaign would have taken us weeks, if not months to operationalise in-house. The team did an exceptional job, and I’m very pleased with the results”.

“#Crimediggers is a terrific example of how agencies like Steam are using Cloud 66 to overcome challenging technical hurdles for their clients” said Khash Sajadi, CEO and cofounder of Cloud 66. “As engineers ourselves, we’re very focused on creating the tools needed by developers to help deploy applications seamlessly”.

Edited from press release by Cecilia Rehn.

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