George Kurtz | |
---|---|
Born | May 5, 1965 (age 57) [1] New Jersey, U.S. [2] |
Alma mater | Seton Hall University [3] |
Occupation(s) | President and CEO of CrowdStrike |
George Kurtz (born May 5, 1965) is the co-founder and CEO of cybersecurity company CrowdStrike and an American racing driver. He was also the founder of Foundstone and chief technology officer of McAfee. [4]
Kurtz grew up in Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey and attended Parsippany High School. [5] [2] He claims that he started programming video games on his Commodore when he was in fourth grade. He went on to build bulletin board systems in high school. [3] He graduated from Seton Hall University with a degree in accounting. [2]
After college, Kurtz began his career at Price Waterhouse as a CPA. In 1993, Price Waterhouse made Kurtz one of its first employees in its new security group. In 1999, he co-wrote Hacking Exposed, a book about cybersecurity for network administrators, with Stuart McClure and Joel Scambray. The book sold more than 600,000 copies and was translated into more than 30 languages. [2] [6] Later that year he started a cybersecurity company, Foundstone, one of the first dedicated security consulting companies. Foundstone focused on vulnerability management software and services and developed a well-recognized incident response practice, with much of the Fortune 100 among its customers. [7] [8]
McAfee acquired Foundstone for $86 million in August 2004, with Kurtz assuming the title of senior vice president and general manager of risk management at McAfee. [7] [9] During his tenure, he helped craft the company's strategy for security risk management. [9] In October 2009, McAfee appointed him to the roles of worldwide chief technology officer and executive vice president. [10] In 2010, he participated in Operation Aurora, the investigation of a series of cyber attacks against Google and several other companies. [11] In 2011, he led McAfee's research around the emerging Night Dragon and Shady RAT threats, alongside McAfee's vice president of threat research Dmitri Alperovitch. [12] [13]
Over time, Kurtz became frustrated that existing security technology functioned slowly and was not, as he perceived it, evolving at the pace of new threats. [14] On a flight, he watched the passenger seated next to him wait 15 minutes for McAfee software to load on his laptop, an incident he later cited as part of his inspiration for founding CrowdStrike. [15] [2] He resigned from McAfee in October 2011. [13]
In November 2011, Kurtz joined private equity firm Warburg Pincus as an "entrepreneur-in-residence" [16] [17] and began working on his next project, CrowdStrike. He, Gregg Marston (former chief financial officer at Foundstone), and Dmitri Alperovitch co-founded CrowdStrike in Irvine, California, formally announcing the company's launch in February 2012. [18] [19] Kurtz pitched the idea for the company to Warburg Pincus and secured $25 million in funding. [3] [20]
CrowdStrike shifted the focus from anti-malware and antivirus products (McAfee's approach to cybersecurity) to identifying the techniques used by hackers in order to spot incoming threats. [21] [22] The company also developed a "cloud-first" model in order to reduce the software load on customers' computers. [21] CrowdStrike, now headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, attracted public interest in June 2016 for its role in investigating the Democratic National Committee cyber attacks, [15] and in May 2017, the company exceeded a valuation of $1 billion. [23] In 2019, CrowdStrike's $612 million initial public offering on the Nasdaq brought the company to a $6.6 billion valuation under Kurtz's leadership. [24] [25] In July 2020, an IDC report named CrowdStrike as the fastest-growing endpoint security software vendor. [26]
In his personal time, he is an avid exotic car collector and has driven Audi R8 LMS GT4 and Mercedes-AMG GT3 [27] in the Pirelli World Challenge. [2] [28] Previously, he raced in the Radical Cup and Sports Car Club of America endurance events. [29] He is currently driving for CrowdStrike Racing.
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; results in italics indicate fastest lap)
Year | Team | Class | Make | Engine | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | Pos. | Points |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2021 | CORE Autosport | LMP3 | Ligier JS P320 | Nissan VK56DE 5.6L V8 | DAY 5† | SEB 1 | MDO | WGL 2 | WGL | ELK | PET 7 | 11th | 968 |
2022 | CORE Autosport | LMP3 | Ligier JS P320 | Nissan VK56DE 5.6 L V8 | DAY 3† | SEB 5 | MDO | WGL 2 | MOS | ELK | PET 5 | 17th | 921 |
2023 | CrowdStrike Racing by APR | LMP2 | Oreca 07 | Gibson GK428 V8 | DAY 2† | SEB 5 | MON 3 | WGL 1 | ELK 7 | IMS 3 | PET 1 | 2nd | 1958 |
2024 | CrowdStrike Racing by APR | LMP2 | Oreca 07 | Gibson GK428 V8 | DAY 2 | SEB | WGL | MOS | ELK | IMS | ATL | ||
Source: [30] |
† 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.
Year | Team | Co-Drivers | Car | Class | Laps | Pos. | Class Pos. |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2021 | CORE Autosport | Jon Bennett Colin Braun Matt McMurry | Ligier JS P320 | LMP3 | 737 | 31st | 5th |
2022 | CORE Autosport | Jon Bennett Colin Braun Niclas Jönsson | Ligier JS P320 | LMP3 | 721 | 16th | 3rd |
2023 | CrowdStrike Racing by APR | Esteban Gutiérrez Ben Hanley Matt McMurry | Oreca 07 | LMP2 | 761 | 8th | 2nd |
2024 | CrowdStrike Racing by APR | Colin Braun Malthe Jakobsen Toby Sowery | Oreca 07 | LMP2 | 767 | 10th | 2nd |
Year | Team | Co-Drivers | Car | Class | Laps | Pos. | Class Pos. |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2023 | Algarve Pro Racing | James Allen Colin Braun | Oreca 07 | LMP2 | 322 | 20th | 10th |
LMP2 Pro-Am | 1st | ||||||
Source: [30] |
McAfee Corp., formerly known as McAfee Associates, Inc. from 1987 to 1997 and 2004 to 2014, Network Associates Inc. from 1997 to 2004, and Intel Security Group from 2014 to 2017, is an American global computer security software company headquartered in San Jose, California.
Chris Wysopal is an entrepreneur, computer security expert and co-founder and CTO of Veracode. He was a member of the high-profile hacker think tank the L0pht where he was a vulnerability researcher.
Fortinet, Inc. is a cybersecurity company with headquarters in Sunnyvale, California. The company develops and sells security solutions like firewalls, endpoint security and intrusion detection systems. Fortinet has offices located all over the world.
Ivanti is an IT software company headquartered in South Jordan, Utah, United States. It produces software for IT Security, IT Service Management, IT Asset Management, Unified Endpoint Management, Identity Management and supply chain management. It was formed in January 2017 with the merger of LANDESK and HEAT Software, and later acquired Cherwell Software. The company became more widely known after several major security incidents related to the VPN hardware it sells.
Trellix is a privately held cybersecurity company that was founded in 2022. It has been involved in the detection and prevention of major cybersecurity attacks. It provides hardware, software, and services to investigate cybersecurity attacks, protect against malicious software, and analyze IT security risks.
Operation Aurora was a series of cyber attacks performed by advanced persistent threats such as the Elderwood Group based in Beijing, China, with associations with the People's Liberation Army. First disclosed publicly by Google on January 12, 2010, by a weblog post, the attacks began in mid-2009 and continued through December 2009.
F. William Conner is an American business executive. Conner has worked across a variety of high-tech industries, specializing in corporate turnaround, cybersecurity, data and infrastructure.
Operation Shady RAT is an ongoing series of cyber attacks starting in mid-2006 reported by Dmitri Alperovitch, Vice President of Threat Research at Internet security company McAfee in August 2011, who also led and named the Night Dragon Operation and Operation Aurora cyberespionage intrusion investigations. The attacks have hit at least 71 organizations, including defense contractors, businesses worldwide, the United Nations, and the International Olympic Committee. Governments attacked include Canada, India, South Korea, Taiwan, United States and Vietnam. International bodies attacked include the United Nations, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the International Olympic Committee, the World Anti-Doping Agency.
Dmitri Alperovitch is an American think-tank founder, author, investor, philanthropist, podcast host and former computer security industry executive. He is the chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, a geopolitics think-tank in Washington, D.C., and a co-founder and former chief technology officer of CrowdStrike. Alperovitch is a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Russia who came to the United States in 1994 with his family.
Mandiant is an American cybersecurity firm and a subsidiary of Google. It rose to prominence in February 2013 when it released a report directly implicating China in cyber espionage. In December 2013, Mandiant was acquired by FireEye for $1 billion, who eventually sold the FireEye product line, name, and its employees to Symphony Technology Group for $1.2 billion in June 2021.
Cozy Bear, classified by the United States federal government as advanced persistent threat APT29, is a Russian hacker group believed to be associated with one or more intelligence agencies of Russia. The Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) deduced from security camera footage that it is led by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), a view shared by the United States. Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike also previously suggested that it may be associated with either the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) or SVR. The group has been given various nicknames by other cybersecurity firms, including CozyCar, CozyDuke, Dark Halo, The Dukes, Midnight Blizzard, NOBELIUM, Office Monkeys, StellarParticle, UNC2452, and YTTRIUM.
CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. is an American cybersecurity technology company based in Austin, Texas. It provides cloud workload and endpoint security, threat intelligence, and cyberattack response services. The company has been involved in investigations of several high-profile cyberattacks, including the 2014 Sony Pictures hack, the 2015–16 cyber attacks on the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and the 2016 email leak involving the DNC.
The Democratic National Committee cyber attacks took place in 2015 and 2016, in which two groups of Russian computer hackers infiltrated the Democratic National Committee (DNC) computer network, leading to a data breach. Cybersecurity experts, as well as the U.S. government, determined that the cyberespionage was the work of Russian intelligence agencies.
On Friday July 29, 2016 the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee reported that its computer systems had been infiltrated. It is strongly believed by US intelligence sources that the infiltrator groups are Russian foreign intelligence groups that breached the Democratic National Committee's computer systems. These groups are known as Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear.
A threat actor, bad actor or malicious actor is either a person or a group of people that take part in an action that is intended to cause harm to the cyber realm including: computers, devices, systems, or networks. The term is typically used to describe individuals or groups that perform malicious acts against a person or an organization of any type or size. Threat actors engage in cyber related offenses to exploit open vulnerabilities and disrupt operations. Threat actors have different educational backgrounds, skills, and resources. The frequency and classification of cyber attacks changes rapidly. The background of threat actors helps dictate who they target, how they attack, and what information they seek. There are a number of threat actors including: cyber criminals, nation-state actors, ideologues, thrill seekers/trolls, insiders, and competitors. These threat actors all have distinct motivations, techniques, targets, and uses of stolen data. See Advanced persistent threats for a list of identified threat actors.
Forcepoint is an American multinational corporation software company headquartered in Austin, Texas, that develops computer security software and data protection, cloud access security broker, firewall and cross-domain solutions.
BitSight is a cybersecurity ratings company that analyzes companies, government agencies, and educational institutions. It is based in Back Bay, Boston. Security ratings that are delivered by BitSight are used by banks and insurance companies among other organizations. The company rates more than 200,000 organizations with respect to their cybersecurity.
Checkmarx is an enterprise application security company headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia in the United States. Founded in 2006, the company provides application security testing (AST) solutions that embed security into every phase of the software development lifecycle (SDLC), an approach to software testing known as "shift everywhere."
The Cyber Safety Review Board was established by the United States Secretary of Homeland Security. Modeled after the National Transportation Safety Board, it will meet in cases of significant cybersecurity incidents. The board's creation was announced upon President Joe Biden's signing of Executive Order 14028 on May 12, 2021.
Talon Cyber Security is an Israel-based provider of cybersecurity technologies with headquarters in Tel Aviv. It develops a secure browser engineered to provide enterprise-grade security across all devices, irrespective of location, device type, or operating system.