George Kurtz (born October 14, 1970) is an American businessman. He is a co-founder and chief executive officer of CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity technology company.
He founded Foundstone, a security products and anti-virus software company, and became chief technology officer of McAfee after it acquired Foundstone in 2004.[2][3] Kurtz is co-author of Hacking Exposed: Network Security Secrets & Solutions, which has shaped best practices in vulnerability assessment and penetration testing[4][5]. He is noted for various contributions to cybersecurity, including creating the field of vulnerability management; defining terminology, workflows, and services that remain central to cybersecurity; and leading an industry shift toward cloud-based cybersecurity architectures[6][7]. In 2024, Fortune magazine named Kurtz one of the "100 Most Powerful People in Business".[8]
After college, Kurtz began his career at Price Waterhouse as a Certified Public Accountant.[15] In 1993, he became a member of the firm's new security division as cybersecurity grew in importance. Kurtz conducted penetration testing, a then-new approach to finding vulnerabilities in corporate network infrastructure.[16][17] He later joined Ernst & Young, where he continued penetration testing and helped develop internet security protocols and practices that remain part of the cybersecurity field.[16] After a few years at Ernst & Young, Kurtz left to start his first company[16].
Foundstone
In 1999, Kurtz launched Foundstone[16], a cybersecurity product company that also offered cybersecurity services[16], a novel pairing at the time.[16] The company competed against Internet Security Systems, which was later acquired by IBM.[18]
Frustrated with time-consuming and incomplete vulnerability assessment technologies of the day, Kurtz pioneered vulnerability management, creating both the category and term.[19][20] His company also pioneered professional training in penetration-testing and vulnerability management.[21] The training was based on Hacking Exposed, a book about cybersecurity for network administrators that he co-wrote in 1999 with Stuart McClure and Joel Scambray. The book has sold more than 600,000 copies and been translated into more than 30 languages.[1] The training helped create a global community of cybersecurity professionals well-versed on the new domain of vulnerability management.[21][22][23]
McAfee
In August 2004, Kurtz sold Foundstone to McAfee, where he became Senior Vice President and General Manager of Risk Management.[22][23] He was promoted to Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in October 2009, overseeing the company's technology strategy and innovation efforts.[24][25] As CTO, Kurtz was involved in McAfee's response to major cybersecurity incidents, including 2010's Operation Aurora, which attacked on Google and other organizations.[26] He also led research into cyber threats such as Night Dragon and Shady RAT.[27][28]
In 2010, an update to McAfee's antivirus definitions sent Windows XP Service Pack 3 into a restart loop, as it removed the Svchost.exe, which Windows uses to share services as a single process.[29] McAFee said the faulty update was later removed from its servers, adding, "We are not aware of significant impact on consumer customers and believe we have effectively limited such occurrence".[30][31][32][33] Kurtz resigned from his executive roles at McAfee in October 2011.[28]
CrowdStrike
Founding and early years
In November 2011, Kurtz joined private equity firm Warburg Pincus as an "entrepreneur-in-residence" where he began developing the concept for a new cybersecurity venture.[34][35] In February 2012, he, Gregg Marston, and Dmitri Alperovitch co-founded CrowdStrike in Irvine, California, with $25 million in initial funding from Warburg Pincus.[36][37][13][38] Kurtz served as CEO. The following year, the company launched its flagship product, Falcon, which offered a new approach to cybersecurity: a cloud-native, intelligence-driven model intended to shift away from traditional on-premise solutions and reduce the performance impact on client systems.[39][40][41][42] CrowdStrike was later included on the MIT Tech Review's 50 Disruptive Companies list.[43]
A July 2020 report by IDC called CrowdStrike the fastest-growing vendor in the market.[47] In 2024, CrowdStrike was added to the S&P 500 index, becoming the fastest cybersecurity company to join the index within five years of its IPO.[17] That year, Cybercrime Magazine named Kurtz its "Cybersecurity Person of the Year."[48] In 2025, Kurtz received a USA Award for "excellence in business leadership" from CEO Today.[49]
CrowdStrike has been recognized for its innovation in the cybersecurity industry, particularly in endpoint security.[50] In March 2020, Andrew Nowinski, an analyst at D.A. Davidson & Co., said CrowdStrike offered a leading solution in the field.[16] In 2023 and 2024, the company's AI-powered threat detection and response products were said to advance the fields of threat hunting and automated security.[51][52] The company's subscription-based approach to cybersecurity has been compared to Salesforce's model in customer relationship management (CRM) and ServiceNow's role in IT service management (ITSM).
CEO Kurtz issued a public apology within hours of the outage, acknowledging the severity of the disruption and expressing the company's deep regret for the impact on customers and the wider public.[56] Microsoft and CrowdStrike collaborated to develop and deploy a patch to restore system stability.[57][58][59][60][61] The company released several statements as it worked to fix the problem and prevent similar ones in the future.[61] The company also promised to execute a comprehensive internal review of its software development and testing processes.[62] Independent industry analysis praised CrowdStrike's transparent and rapid response as an example of best practices in incident management and communication within the cybersecurity sector.[63]
Media noted that this was the second time Kurtz had been at the center of a global IT outage, after the 2010 incident at McAfee.[64][65]
Real estate holdings
Since 2019, Kurtz has been developing real estate in the Southwestern United States.[citation needed]
The Parque
Kurtz purchased the site of Cracker Jax, an amusement park and driving range in Scottsdale, Arizona, and submitted plans in 2023 to turn the area into “The Parque", a 2-million-square-foot mixed-use campus with residential units, an office building, restaurants, retail space, a hotel, and a 2-acre green space.[66] Despite some community opposition, the Scottsdale City Council voted 5-2 to approve the project.[67][68]
The Promenade
Kurtz owns The Promenade, a shopping center in Scottsdale, where he has made environmental and visual improvements. The center includes over 600,000 square feet of retail space and is known for its iconic Frank Lloyd Wright spire.[69]
Scottsdale Quarter
Kurtz’s FalconEye Ventures acquired Scottsdale Quarter in 2025, a 755,000-square-foot mixed-use property in Scottsdale. Plans include a $100 million upgrade to improve its luxury retail, office, and residential offerings.[70]
In 2021, Kurtz again raced in the GTWC America series but also in prototype cars, competing in a Ligier JS P320 in the IMSA SportsCar Championship'sLMP3 category.[78][79] In that series, he competed solely in the endurance events, winning at Sebring and scoring a class podium at Watkins Glen.[80] Three missed weekends in the former series dropped Kurtz and Braun to sixth in the drivers' standings, with two class wins.
In 2022, Kurtz remained in both championships, scoring two podiums in IMSA, including third place in class at the 24 Hours of Daytona. In GTWC America, he won ten of 16 races, earning the title in the SRO3 class.[81][82]
In 2023, Kurtz stepped up to the LMP2 category to compete full-time in the IMSA SCC, driving for his own Crowdstrike team supported by Algarve Pro Racing alongside Ben Hanley, with silver-ranked Nolan Siegel supporting the pair at the endurance rounds.[83] Kurtz and Hanley won at the season-ending Petit Le Mans and another race, but finished second in the standings, edged out by Paul-Loup Chatin and Ben Keating.[84] In the Michelin Endurance Trophy, which took into account placings solely within the four endurance races, the Kurtz-Hanley combo came out on top.[85] Kurtz also made his debut at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, where he, Colin Braun, and James Allen won in the LMP2 Pro-Am subclass.[86][87] Finally, he returned to the GTWC America to defend his title, and although Kurtz only finished third in the SRO3 category he claimed Pro-Am honours, having partnered with Braun throughout the year.[88] During the 2023–24 winter, Kurtz and Braun raced in the Asian Le Mans Series, where they and young pro Malthe Jakobsen won two races on their way to the championship.[89]
† Points only counted towards the Michelin Endurance Cup, and not the overall LMP2 Championship. † Points only counted towards the Michelin Endurance Cup, and not the overall LMP3 Championship.
↑ Westhoven, William. "Parsippany native leads charge against cyber attacks"Archived July 25, 2024, at the Wayback Machine , Asbury Park Press, December 29, 2014. Accessed February 22, 2018. "A Parsippany native on the front lines of the global cyber wars says if you thought 2014 was wild, wait until 2015.... Kurtz, who spent much of his time in Parsippany fly fishing or playing for the Parsippany High School football team, started out as an accountant after graduating from Seton Hall University, after which he worked for firms such as Price Waterhouse."
↑ Sorkin, Andrew Ross; Mattu, Ravi; Warner, Bernhard; Kessler, Sarah; de la Merced, Michael J.; Hirsch, Lauren; Livni, Ephrat; Gaffney, Austyn (July 19, 2024). "Counting the Costs of a Global IT Outage". The New York Times. ISSN0362-4331. Archived from the original on July 19, 2024. Retrieved July 20, 2024.
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