The firm at the centre of the global IT outage was created to ‘reinvent security for the cloud era,’ according to company documents. It is headquartered in Austin, Texas, listed on NASDAQ, and is valued at US$124 billion.
“The outcome of security investments should be stopping breaches. That’s our mission, and it’s what drives us every day,” George Kurtz, the CEO of CrowdStrike, told Forbes in June.
The company was co-founded by Kurtz in 2011 and is known for its CrowdStrike Falcon product designed to detect threats and stop breaches. Just four days ago, CrowdStrike announced an updated product called the ‘Falcon Complete Next-Gen MDR’ that could stop breaches with ‘unprecedented speed and precision,’ according to company documentation.
The organisation is now facing hard questions about a disastrous software update that saw airports, banks and countless online services go offline.
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“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” CrowdStrike said in a statement to Forbes Australia.
“Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website,” a CrowdStrike spokesperson says.
Shawn Henry is CrowdStrike’s chief security officer and an FBI veteran. He was interviewed on ‘Forbes Talks’ about cyberattacks, hacking and legacy tech in December 2023.
“Some of the things we are seeing right now is the continued exploitation of legacy technology,” Henry said during the interview. The company uses AI technology to minimise exploitation and has done for a long time.
“We have been using AI for more than a decade at CrowdStrike. The use of AI to go through large swaths of data has been around for a long time. For a defender it is of great value,” says Henry.
“CrowdStrike combines artificial intelligence, big data and the computational power of the cloud to stop cyberattacks never seen before — and react at a speed that redefines expectations,” the company says on its website.
Customers that use CrowdStrike include the Intel Corporation and South Australian Power Networks.
“SA Power Networks is responsible for providing safe and reliable energy services to 1.7 million South Australians,” a statement on the CrowdStrike website reads. “As one of Australia’s major critical infrastructure providers, SA Power Networks is a constant target for adversaries.”
The energy provider looks to the company for ‘threat intelligence and proactive security capabilities.’
There is also a connection to Formula 1 racing. CrowdStrike states on its website that it protects the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team. The common characteristic between the two companies, is speed, according to the company.
“Cybersecurity and Formula One, two worlds where speed and performance dictate success or failure,” the website reads.
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