George Kurtz bet that security belonged in the cloud
CrowdStrike’s founder built a cybersecurity leader, then led it through one of the largest IT outages on record.
Before CrowdStrike, George Kurtz was already well known in security. He co-wrote the bestselling book Hacking Exposed, founded the security company Foundstone in 1999 and, after McAfee acquired it in 2004, became McAfee’s worldwide chief technology officer.
In 2011 he co-founded CrowdStrike with Dmitri Alperovitch and Gregg Marston. The bet was that protecting computers from attacks should run from the cloud, with a lightweight agent on each device and the analysis done centrally.
From startup to standard
CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform grew from endpoint protection into a broad set of security products. The company went public in June 2019 and became one of the most widely used security vendors among large enterprises.
The outage
On July 19, 2024, a faulty CrowdStrike software update caused about 8.5 million Windows computers to crash, disrupting airlines, hospitals and banks around the world. Kurtz publicly apologized, and the company changed how it tests and releases updates. CrowdStrike kept most of its customers through the episode.
Outside work, Kurtz races cars professionally, including at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
What to watch
CrowdStrike is pushing into AI-driven security operations and identity protection, competing directly with Palo Alto Networks and Microsoft for the role of a company’s main security platform.
- Company
- CrowdStrike
- Role
- Co-founder, President & CEO
- HQ
- Austin, Texas
- Founded
- 2011
- Section
- Cybersecurity
This profile draws on public reporting and company materials.
Sources: CrowdStrike: George Kurtz · Wikipedia: George Kurtz · Wikipedia: 2024 CrowdStrike incident
Photo: CrowdStrike, Inc., CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
