Pizza Pizza

Pizza Pizza is one of the largest quick-service pizza restaurant brands in Canada. Founded in Toronto in 1967, Pizza Pizza rapidly expanded throughout Ontario. In 2007, Pizza Pizza acquired the Pizza 73 brand in Alberta, which significantly increased the number of its restaurants. The company opened its first location in New Westminster, British Columbia in 2018, marking the start of the franchise’s planned expansion across the greater Vancouver area.

The company currently has more than 700 Pizza Pizza and Pizza 73 locations across Canada, both as franchises and as joint ventures with individual store owners. An innovative company that uses wind and solar power for its data centers, Pizza Pizza strives to maintain a state-of-the-art technical environment across all locations.

Pizza Pizza is dedicated to providing its customers with excellence in customer service—and that means processing orders quickly and accurately while ensuring that customer data is protected. In 2007, Pizza Pizza’s IT team began to see a growing number of virus attacks in other organizations and wanted to ensure they had a solution to protect their systems. At the same time, Pizza Pizza customers were beginning to adopt smartphones, and the company wanted to expand its ecommerce channel to give patrons an easy way to place orders via mobile devices. With this new channel and the growing number of threats, the company was under increasing pressure to ensure that every transaction that passed through its system was secure.

In addition, Pizza Pizza noticed that its incumbent security solution was consuming a significant amount of bandwidth. When the solution updated, it created a bottleneck that occasionally prevented orders from going through. “It was not a viable solution,” said Amar Narain, chief information officer and vice president of information technology at Pizza Pizza. “We needed something that worked and that didn’t add risk to our business.”

Trend Micro’s forward-looking security and its uniquely efficient approach to updates are a winning combination for Pizza Pizza. In 2007, Narain needed a new security solution to protect the company without interfering with the processing of orders. Staying current on updates was crucial for security, but those updates could not slow down the system. “Trend Micro’s solution is the one that stood out,” said Narain. “Instead of tying up bandwidth by pushing an update to five different computers in the store over one link, the Trend Micro™ OfficeScan™ solution (now Trend Micro Apex One™ solution) pushes the update to just one computer, and then that one pushes it to the rest of the computers in the store.”

When Pizza Pizza began exploring the cloud in 2017, Narain and his team again looked to Trend Micro. They toured Trend Micro’s offices and research labs and were impressed with what they saw. “What we really like about Trend Micro is that they look ahead,” said Narain. “They look at where security is going and how it’s evolving. It gives us confidence in their solutions.”

"What we really like about Trend Micro is that they look ahead. They look at where security is going and how it’s evolving. It gives us confidence in their solutions."

Amar Narain
Chief Information Officer and Vice President of Information Technology
Pizza Pizza

Pizza Pizza deployed OfficeScan to its endpoints across the enterprise in 2007 and has been using it ever since. OfficeScan’s blend of machine learning and threat protection techniques eliminates the company’s security gaps across any user activity and any endpoint. It constantly learns, adapts, and automatically shares threat intelligence across the environment. “OfficeScan gives us peace of mind, knowing that all our stores are protected,” said Narain.

Narain’s positive experience with OfficeScan led him to turn again to Trend Micro for server protection with Trend Micro™ Deep Security™ solution in 2018. Deep Security automatically and virtually patches server, cloud, virtual desktop, and application vulnerabilities. “Our Trend Micro proof of concept was a success,” said Narain. “With Deep Security, we know threats are being caught and patches are being applied proactively.”

"With Deep Security, we know threats are being caught and patches are being applied proactively."

Amar Narain
Chief Information Officer and Vice President of Information Technology
Pizza Pizza

Since implementing OfficeScan and Deep Security, Pizza Pizza’s IT systems have not been compromised, even as monthly reviews reveal that they are receiving more spam, viruses, phishing emails, and malware than ever before. “We see these threats, but they are taken care of by Deep Security before they can do any damage,” said Narain. “That extra security on appliances and servers means that nothing is making its way to the server.”

Trend Micro solutions push software updates and security patches to franchises simultaneously to ensure that all stores are up to date. The IT team can verify the updates on a single console, so they know that all their stores always have the best possible protection. “I would highly recommend Trend Micro, based on my positive experiences,” said Narain. “They have all the pieces we require in a security solution.”

Narain and his team have been busy rewriting Pizza Pizza’s ecommerce and retail back end onto Google Cloud Platform, using microservices for rapid implementation. “We want the benefits of the cloud, such as scalability, flexibility, and agility,” he said. “Trend Micro security will play a big role in that effort, helping the company ensure that all data is protected both in and out of the cloud.”