CrowdStrike

With the first virus on the computer, the IT industry has seen multiple threats in the form of viruses, malicious activities, and cyber-attacks. Today, data is everything, and safeguarding the data has become the supreme task for the industry. There are several companies that are working towards providing a secure working environment and keeping the data safe from any sort of external threat. CrowdStrike is one of those companies bringing the most innovative products promoting cyber security and fighting such attacks. This 10-year-old company is best known for its endpoint security, threat intelligence, and cyberattack response services.

About The Company

CrowdStrike is a publically traded company founded in 2011. The company trades on Nasdaq with the ticker name CRWD. Its founders include George Kurtz, Dmitri Alperovitch, and Gregg Marston. The company headquarters is based in Sunnyvale, California, U.S., and it operates globally. CrowdStrike is home to about 4000 employees, and as of 2021, it made revenues worth US$874.438 million. A few of the major products by the company include Endpoint security, Security and IT operations, and Security cloud. CrowdStrike has helped companies tackle major high-profile cyberattacks like the Sony Pictures hack in 2014 and the Democratic National Committee cyber attacks in 2015-16, etc.

Founding CrowdStrike

George Kurtz, Dmitri Alperovitch, and Gregg Marston co-founded CrowdStrike in 2011. The next year, the founders started a subsidiary with the name CrowdStrike Services, Inc. The subsidiary provided proactive and incident response services. The company’s first product was the CrowdStrike Falcon, a threat intelligence software published in the year 2013. In the following years, CrowdStrike assisted major organizations like the United States Department of Justice, Sony Pictures, and the Democratic National Committee in tackling the biggest cyber-attacks. The company was also successful in uncovering malicious activities by many hacking groups, such as the activities of the Energetic Bear that worked for the Russian Federation.
In 2015, CrowdStrike received investments from Google through a Series C funding round. CrowdStrike launched a version of its antivirus software Falcon for mobile devices in 2017. During the same year, it became a unicorn and had annual revenues worth $100 million. By 2018, the company value reached more than $3 billion. The company went public on Nasdaq and had its first IPO in 2019. In the years 2020 and 2021, CrowdStrike acquired companies, including Preempt Security and Humio.
The company has won awards like AWS Global Public Sector Partner Award for best cybersecurity solution and Canada AWS Partner Award as the ISV Partner of the Year in 2021. It also got ranked at number one for Modern Endpoint Security 2020 Market Shares in IDC’s Worldwide Corporate Endpoint Security Market Shares, 2020 Report in the same year. Telstra, Google, Rackspace, March Capital Partners, Accel Partners, and Warburg Pincus are some of the major investors in CrowdStrike.

The CEO of CrowdStrike

George Kurtz is the President, CEO, and one of the co-founders of CrowdStrike. He was born in 1970 and grew up in Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey. Kurtz went to the Parsippany High School, and according to sources, he started to program video games at an early age. When he was in high school, he built a bulletin board system too. He has got an accounting degree from Seton Hall University.
As soon Kurtz graduated from college, he started to work at Price Waterhouse. He then was shifted to the security group of the company in 1993. In 1999, he co-published a book on cybersecurity named Hacking Exposed, which later came in 30 different languages. In the same year, Kurtz founded his first company named Foundstone, which he sold to McAfee in 2004, becoming the senior vice president and general manager of risk management at McAfee.
In 2011, Kurtz, along with the former chief financial officer at Foundstone, Gregg Marston, and Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founded CrowdStrike in Irvine, California. Since then, he has been working as the President and the CEO of CrowdStrike.