Internet security company Cloudflare opens first Canadian office

If it is not for the epidemic, Michelle Zatlin will be in Toronto to celebrate the opening of the first Canadian office of Internet security and performance provider Cloudflare.

Instead, the Saskatchewan-born co-founder and president of a San Francisco-based company would have to enter into an agreement to open a virtual office.

Photo of Michelle Zatlin, president of Cloudfare

Michelle zatlin

Possibly known for its distributed denial of service mitigation, Cloudflare offers cloud-based web application firewalls, bot management, Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) implementations, traffic acceleration and more.

Cloudflare already has a data center, seven point presence and thousands of customers, including e-commerce platform Shopify, media company Thomson Reuters and investment service Wealthsimple. But a physical office would allow it to better serve customers and solution provider partners, Zatlin explained in an interview.

"As a Canadian, I'm really excited to make an additional commitment to the country I love," Jettlin said.

Asked why the company, which started in 2009, waited so long to open an office here, Jatinin said it was a matter of time. "When you're growing a business, there's a lot to do. You need the right person to run the office," he said.

Photo of ash mathur, cloudfare canada

Ash mathur

The man was found in Ash Mathur, who became head of sales for Cloudfare Canada. He worked for Cisco, Spunk, CenturyLink and Microsoft.

The company has started hiring "a couple dozen" for its Toronto office this year and hopes to triple in the near future, Zetlin said.

They will include sales, marketing, solution engineers to partner with customers and a manager to oversee partners. Cloudflare has solution provider partners that provide their security, reliability and performance solutions with value-added and managed services; Alliance partners, who embed Cloudflare in their applications; And hosting partners, such as hosting providers, who provide complementary solutions within their cloud stack.

One is CloudOps, which advises companies on their shift to the cloud.

"Canada has amazing talent, and I think it's great that we can bring employment to that talent, and they can help make an impact on the Internet around the world," Jatlin said. “Such high-level STEM graduates come from Canada every year… (many) have had to graduate in Silicon Valley. Now those engineers, if they choose, can live in Toronto to work. "

Alfred Menezes, a professor of mathematics at the University of Waterloo, says he brings students to the new office at Cloudfare.

"With Canada being close to the research center and evolving global security research, we are very pleased that CloudFare is opening an office in Toronto," Menezes said in a statement that CloudFare distributed in its announcement today. “The opening of this office allows us to deepen CloudFair's participation in Waterloo's world-renowned co-op program. Our group in cryptography, security and privacy at the University of Waterloo has collaborated with researchers at Cloudfare over the years and look forward to furthering our work with local talent. "

Cloudflare says its network spans over 200 cities in more than 100 countries, with more than 3.5 million subscribers globally.

Through its Project Fair Shot, Cloudflare is facilitating its weighting room resource allocation for free to government agencies, hospitals, pharmacies, or other organizations that are distributing COVID-19 vaccines. The waiting room, which can be positioned in front of any existing registration website, helps individuals in waiting for a short time to make appointments. One user is a Vancouver-based vaccination solution named Jane.