International Hosting Provider Worldstream Achieves PCI DSS Certification

press Thursday, July 25, 2019

Worldstream, an international IaaS hosting provider experiencing more than 40% year-over-year growth for 5 years in a row now, today announces its achievement of compliance with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) version 3.2. Designed to minimize the exposure of credit card data to risk of fraud or compromise, the PCI DSS certification being achieved is important for Worldstream to have as their webshop hosting clients are asking for payment security level guarantees. The 3rd party audited PCI DSS certification was issued by IT audit company Noordbeek B.V.

With more than 15,000 dedicated servers installed in its company-owned data centers in Naaldwijk, the Netherlands, Worldstream serves customers globally with clients including cloud service providers (CSPs), broadcasters, systems integrators, independent software vendors (ISVs), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers and ecommerce hosting clients. The successful completion of the PCI DSS audits and obtaining the certificate is adding to the other certifications already achieved by Worldstream including ISO 9001:2015, and ISO/IEC 27001:2015 for information security management, as well as ISO 14001:2015 - specifying the requirements for Worldstream's environmental management system and sustainable operations.

"The IT audit firm has checked and validated all relevant PCI DSS related processes within the Worldstream organization as well as the management and operating controls that are in place," said Lennert Vollebregt, CEO and co-owner of Worldstream. "Complying with the PCI DSS directives is important for us, as Worldstream is serving quite some merchants and also managed hosting providers with webshop operators among their clients. The fact that Worldstream fully meets the rigorous PCI DSS requirements gives our ecommerce customers piece of mind with regard to the secure handling and storing of credit card information and payment data."

Global Network Backbone

The PCI DSS certificate validates Worldstream's physical security measures in their offices and two company-owned data centers in Naaldwijk, the Netherlands. Next to that it also validates Worldstream's documentation of organizational processes and IT system management for example, as well as the way the company manages its suppliers and guaranteeing its business continuity.

Worldstream's global network backbone with ample bandwidth available is working like a magnet on ecommerce hosting customers and managed service providers (MSPs) dealing with ecommerce hosting clients, stated the Worldstream CEO. "Online merchants normally have demanding requirements when it comes to their ecommerce hosting environments," added Mr. Vollebregt. "Especially during holiday season when webshops are experiencing traffic spikes it becomes obvious that the network speed, as well as the latency and availability can make or break online businesses. The main components for an efficient and effective ecommerce hosting infrastructure include the scalability of available bandwidth, the speed of the network backbone, as well as the network's security levels and ability to mitigate DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attacks. We have invested more than 3 million euros in this global network backbone recently, which is paying off for ecommerce hosting clients as it provides them with business continuity guarantees."

20,000 Servers

The announcement follows the news of Worldstream revealing its plans to further build-out its flagship data center in Naaldwijk, the Netherlands. Within the course of a year Worldstream will be doubling its facility capacity from 268 data center racks to 536 racks at this location. To support ecommerce hosting customers and other demanding clients with maximum uptime guarantees, Worldstream has chosen a highly redundant and energy-efficient design for its data center with an N+1 setup. The expanded facility will also be equipped with a fully modular UPS system to facilitate hot-swappable maintenance and avoiding any downtime.

This 2nd phase expansion in Worldstream's flagship data center allows the hosting company to further grow its dedicated server capacity in its data centers to 20,000 servers, but Worldstream is already eying another greenfield data center build nearby.

About Noordbeek IT Audit, Compliance & Advisory

Noordbeek B.V. was founded in 2006 by Prof. Dr. Ir. Ronald Paans, Professor of Postgraduate IT Audit training at the VU University in Amsterdam. Noordbeek is an IT audit and consulting firm specializing in certification programs and handling of complex IT-related issues. Offerings range from certifications in the field of PCI DSS, ISO 27001, ISAE 3402, COBIT 5.0 to consultancy projects such as improving the connection of IT to business processes and making the cooperation between service provider and customer more effective.

For more information about Noordbeek B.V., go to their website.