Dutch IT security startup grows operations centre in CPT, hires local talent

The Money Show's Bruce Whitfield interviews Hans Kroll, Managing Partner at Nedscaper South Africa.

In the early days of Covid, Amsterdam-based Thomas Verwer set up Dutch-South African internet security outfit Nedscaper.

The name of the platform comes from blending the words Nederland and Cape Town.

In Cape Town we develop talent and help communities evolving to the next level of their professional and personal life. By providing Microsoft Cloud Security traineeships for young talent and high-potentials. Connecting every talent with a seasoned security professional in Amsterdam through our successful buddy system!

Nedscaper

Managing partner Hans Kroll came on board as partner to develop Nedscaper's local branch.

He tells Bruce Whitfield the story of how the company's link to South Africa came about.

Nedscaper's founder, who'd been planning to start the company for a number of years, holidayed regularly in Cape Town and particularly enjoyed sampling the local wine.

In a wine bar one day in 2019, he heard a Harvard graduate at the next table relating how he'd taken up a job in the Mother City.

That made him think that Cape Town is able to attract top, top skills... and if it's easy to attract top skills it would also be a good place to build an offshoring hub, which is usually quite hard.

Hans Kroll, Managing Partner - Nedscaper South Africa

I was in a job that was severely hit by Covid and I was forced to start looking at other options... I had been thinking of doing something in the space of skills supply remotely between South Africa and the Netherlands, and by coincidence started talking with Thomas.

Hans Kroll, Managing Partner - Nedscaper South Africa

He explains what their main service, managed detector response, entails.

In a nutshell it us plugging into your IT environment - we deploy our platform and, through a whole set of smart algorithms, we scan your environment 24/7 for any anomalies or suspicious behaviour.

Hans Kroll, Managing Partner - Nedscaper South Africa

On top of that we have a team with analysts sitting in our security operations centre. They do the deeper investigations of the findings. They can also perform mitigating work if necessary.

Hans Kroll, Managing Partner - Nedscaper South Africa

While the pandemic hurt many industries, for Nedscaper it has been "almost a perfect storm" Kroll elaborates.

In South Africa, he says, it served to transform the company's cloud adoption rate which went sky-high.

For more detail, listen to the interview below:

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