NetClean Whitebox offers cloud-based content filtering for ISPs

NetClean, a company that specialises in the detection and filtering of child abuse images, has launched a new cloud-based product that lets ISPs cut access to websites known to be hosting illegal images.

Dubbed Whitebox, it had previously been available as an on-premise net filtering product for SMBs. However, by transforming it into a cloud-based offering, the company claims it is able to serve a greater number of people at a larger scale more efficiently.

Christian Berg, CEO of NetClean, told Cloud Pro: “There are more and more pictures (of child abuse) out there ... and Whitebox is the first line of defence. We are given URL lists from Interpol, taskforces in the UK and law enforcement agencies around the world and we use them to build an aggregated list of URLs to block – and we do block a lot.”

Berg said ISPs in Europe, including the UK, are generally more interested in using Whitebox within private clouds as there is a greater level of consolidation between the companies and “capacity is not a problem for them”.

“For example, Swedish ISP Tele2 set up Whitebox in its own private cloud and then gave access to all the subsidiary companies within the group, which operate in around 10 countries,” he explained.

Meanwhile, another customer, the Department of Internal Affairs in New Zealand has come on board to host a Whitebox cloud for ISPs that may not have the capacity or infrastructure to host a cloud themselves.

Nevertheless, Berg believes more and more of NetClean’s products will be “walking the cloud path”.

“When I look at our customers, I can understand why the big ones want to ‘own’ Whitebox, because their traffic and their network is their value and they want to control everything around it,” Berg explained.

“But at the same time we can see that the CRM systems, like Salesforce, are increasingly in the cloud, and that is also important data. So I think that as these technologies mature and people can see they are actually working, adoption will increase.”