An American company with ambitions to "help build a better internet" is to open its first ever office in Canada.
On April 19, security, performance, and reliability company Cloudflare announced its plans to expand northward and open an office in Toronto.
Cloudflare's co-founder, president, and COO, Michelle Zatlyn, who is Canadian but currently resides in San Francisco, California, said in a blog post that the announcement "feels like a homecoming."
"Canada has always been an important part of our history and customer base, and I am thrilled to see Cloudflare make a further commitment of expanding officially in the country and opening an office in Toronto," wrote Zatlyn.
She added the company is "hiring a team locally to help our current customers and future customers, and to support even more great Canadian organizations."
Cloudflare, whose network encompasses seven cities in Canada, first established a data center in the country back in 2012.
According to Zatlyn, Cloudflare has seen an increase in cyber-attacks originating from Canada and in the country's internet traffic.
"Each day we have blocked an average of 70 billion cyber-attacks on behalf of our customers—more than 3.2 billion of those attacks, that we have seen every day, originate in Canada—and that number has increased by 26% from the end of 2020," said Zatlyn.
"We have also seen online usage increasing as well—Internet traffic in Canada is up about 60% compared to one year ago when the world was first shifting to a virtual lifestyle. Canadians are spending a lot more time online in 2021, compared to 2020."
Toronto mayor John Tory welcomed the news that Cloudflare is to set up an office in his city.
"I am very pleased that Cloudflare has chosen Toronto as the location for its first Canadian office, which will allow them to take advantage of our unmatched talent pipeline,” said Tory.
“Toronto is a magnet for software companies, like Cloudflare, due to our highly-skilled and diverse workforce. As we work toward economic recovery, it’s very encouraging to see that international businesses continue to view the Toronto Region as the place to be for technology and innovation.”