George Kurtz | |
|---|---|
 Kurtz,c. 2016 | |
| Born | (1970-10-14)October 14, 1970 (age 54) New Jersey, U.S.[1] |
| Alma mater | Seton Hall University (BS) |
| Occupation(s) | President and CEO ofCrowdStrike |
| Spouse | Anna Kurtz |
| Children | 2 |
George Kurtz (born October 14, 1970) is an American businessman. He is the CEO and founder of thecybersecurity technology companyCrowdStrike, and the founder and former CEO ofFoundstone, a worldwide security products and anti-virus software company.[2] He previously served as executive vice president andchief technology officer ofMcAfee.[3] He is also the author of the best-selling book of all time on cybersecurity,Hacking Exposed: Network Security Secrets & Solutions.[4]
In 2024, his companyCrowdStrike crashed millions of Windows computers around the world disrupting air travel, banking, broadcasting, and other services in what has been called the largest outage in the history of information technology.[3]
In 2024, Kurtz was named the 76th most powerful person in business by Fortune Magazine and Cybercrime Magazine named him their 2024 Cybersecurity Person of the Year.[5][6]
Outside of his professional pursuits, Kurtz owns and develops real estate projects in Scottsdale, Arizona as well as across the Southwestern United States.
Kurtz is aFIA Bronze-rated race car driver who has won the Pro-Am class in the24 Hours of Le Mans and the24 Hours of Spa.[7][8]
Kurtz grew up inParsippany–Troy Hills, New Jersey, and attendedParsippany High School.[9][1] Kurtz shared that he started programming video games on hisCommodore when he was in fourth grade. He went on to buildbulletin board systems in high school.[10]
Kurtz received aBachelor of Science with a major inaccounting from the privateSeton Hall University inSouth Orange, New Jersey.[11]
After college, Kurtz began his career atPrice Waterhouse as aCPA.[12] In 1993, the company made Kurtz one of its first employees in its new security group. Kurtz and his team were hired by corporations to dopen-testing and locate network risk.[13] Kurtz’ talent at this new concept -penetration testing - led to Price Waterhouse making him a founding employee in the new domain of cybersecurity.[14]
While at Price Waterhouse, and later, when he joinedErnst & Young, Kurtz developed a number of penetration testing and Internet security protocols still in use today.[14] After a few years at Ernst & Young, Kurtz left to start his first company, Foundstone[14]
In 1999, Kurtz co-wroteHacking 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.[1]
Kurtz’s company Foundstone was started in 1999.[14] Frustrated with time-consuming and incomplete vulnerability assessment technologies of the day, Kurtz pioneeredvulnerability management, creating both the category and term.[15][16] Through Foundstone, Kurtz also pioneered the concept of a tech-focused cybersecurity product company with in-house elite cybersecurity services.[14] Industrial opinion of the day was that product companies couldn’t also offer high-end consulting services.[14] Foundstone competed againstInternet Security Systems which was later acquired byIBM.[17]
Foundstone also pioneered security training for aspiring as well as experienced security professionals for pen-testing and vulnerability management.[18] The training was based on Kurtz’s bookHacking Exposed and created a global community of cybersecurity professionals well-versed on the new domain of vulnerability management.[18] Foundstone’s success was recognized by customers, analysts, and competitors. The company was acquired by McAfee in 2004.[19][20]
In August 2004, Foundstone was acquired for $86 million by McAfee, which appointed Kurtz to be senior vice president and general manager ofrisk management.[19][20] In October 2009, McAfee promoted him to chief technology officer and executive vice president.[21] Six months later, McAfee accidentally disrupted its customers' operations around the world when it pushed out a software update that deleted criticalWindows XP system files and caused affected systems tobluescreen and enter aboot loop.[22] In 2010, Kurtz participated inOperation Aurora, the investigation of a series of cyber attacks againstGoogle and several other companies.[23]
In 2011, he led McAfee's research around the emerging Night Dragon andShady RAT threats, alongsideDmitri Alperovitch, who was then McAfee's vice president of threat research.[24][25]
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.[26] 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.[27][1] He resigned from McAfee in October 2011.[25]
In November 2011, Kurtz joined private equity firmWarburg Pincus as an "entrepreneur-in-residence"[28][29] and began working on his next project, CrowdStrike. He, Gregg Marston (formerchief financial officer at Foundstone), andDmitri Alperovitch co-founded CrowdStrike inIrvine, California, formally announcing the company's launch in February 2012.[30][31] Kurtz pitched the idea for the company to Warburg Pincus and secured $25 million in funding.[10][32]
The company was founded with the goal of transforming how companies approach cybersecurity.[33] Kurtz wanted the new focus to be cloud-based, intelligence driven, and proactive.[33] Kurtz observed that cybersecurity as an industry was lacking a platform approach to holistic threat and risk management.[34] He set out to create cybersecurity's platform, akin toSalesforce in CRM,Workday in HRIS, orServiceNow in ITSM.[34]
With this in mind, Kurtz created CrowdStrike, gathering threat intelligence from the “crowd” - hosts and third-party data sources - and using the power of the cloud to “strike” back against adversaries.[35] At the time of its founding, CrowdStrike was one of the first, if not the first, company to bring cybersecurity to the cloud.[35] The company developed a "cloud-first" model in order to reduce the software load on customers' computers.[36] In 2013, CrowdStrike Falcon was released and the company was listed on the MIT Tech Review, 50 Disruptive Companies list.[37]
CrowdStrike shifted from anti-malware and antivirus products (McAfee's approach to cybersecurity) to identifying the techniques used by hackers in order to spot threats.[36][38]
The company is headquartered inAustin, Texas with offices around the globe. It maintains a key office inSunnyvale, California.[39] In 2019, CrowdStrike's $612 millioninitial public offering on theNasdaq brought the company to a $6.6 billion valuation under Kurtz's leadership.[40][41] ATechCrunch article described CrowdStrike as redefining company security standards.[42]
In March 2020, Andrew Nowinski, an analyst at D.A. Davidson & Co., reported, “CrowdStrike just has the best in-class solution.”[14] In July 2020, anIDC report named CrowdStrike as the fastest-growingendpoint security software vendor.[43] A year later, Kurtz ranked on CRN's 2021 Top 100 Executives list.[44]
In 2023, Kurtz warned ofcyber threats from China and criticizedMicrosoft’s response after Chinese hackers exploited a flaw in Microsoft's cloud email service to gain access to the email accounts of U.S. government employees.[45]
In 2024, CrowdStrike was added to theS&P 500. At just five years after going public, this was the fastest a cybersecurity company had ever been listed on the index.[13]
On July 19, 2024, CrowdStrike causedone of the largestinformation technology outages in history when it pushed out a software update that caused an estimated 8.5 million computers runningMicrosoft Windows tocrash and left them unable to properlyrestart.[46] This disrupted industries and governmental operations around the world, causing economic losses estimated in the billions of dollars in what has been called the largest IT outage in history[47] and "historic in scale".[48] In a live interview on NBC's Today, CEO Kurtz apologized to the public. He said company leaders were "deeply sorry for the impact that we've caused to customers, to travelers, to anyone affected by this, including our companies".[49]
Since 2019, Kurtz has been developing real estate assets across the Southwestern US, aiming to improve residential, commercial, retail, and recreational spaces to promote community wellness and drive regional economic growth.[50]
Kurtz purchased the site of Cracker Jax, an amusement park and driving range inScottsdale, Arizona, and submitted plans in 2023 to turn the area into “The Parque."[51] Kurtz received approval to develop a 2-million-square-foot mixed-use campus that will include residential units, an office building, restaurants, retail space, a hotel and a 2-acre green space.[52]
Kurtz owns The Promenade, a shopping center in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he has made both 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.[53]
In 2016, Kurtz made his racing debut in thePirelli World Challenge, driving anAston Martin Vantage GT4 forTRG-AMR. He remained in the series for the following two years, winning the GTS Am class in2017 at the wheel of aMcLaren 570S GT4.[54][55] In 2019, the championship was renamed theGT World Challenge America, which Kurtz contested with pro driverColin Braun in theGT3 category.[56] The duo finished fifth in the Pro-Am standings. The duo reunited in2020,[57][58] when Kurtz made eight podiums, including his first overall win in GT3 machinery atVirginia International Raceway and another victory, to finish as the runner-up of Pro-Am.[59][60]
In 2021, Kurtz again raced in theGTWC America series but also in prototype cars, competing in aLigier JS P320 in theIMSA SportsCar Championship'sLMP3 category.[61][62] In that series, he competed solely in the endurance events, winning atSebring and scoring a class podium atWatkins Glen.[63] 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 inIMSA, including third place in class at the24 Hours of Daytona. InGTWC America, he won ten of 16 races, earning the title in the SRO3 class.[64][65]
In 2023, Kurtz stepped up to theLMP2 category to compete full-time in theIMSA SCC, driving for his own Crowdstrike team supported byAlgarve Pro Racing alongsideBen Hanley, with silver-rankedNolan Siegel supporting the pair at the endurance rounds.[66] Kurtz and Hanley won at the season-endingPetit Le Mans and another race, but finished second in the standings, edged out byPaul-Loup Chatin andBen Keating.[67] In the Michelin Endurance Trophy, which took into account placings solely within the four endurance races, the Kurtz-Hanley combo came out on top.[68] Kurtz also made his debut at the24 Hours of Le Mans, where he, Colin Braun, andJames Allen won in the LMP2 Pro-Am subclass.[69][70] Finally, he returned to theGTWC 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.[71] During the 2023–24 winter, Kurtz and Braun raced in theAsian Le Mans Series, where they and young proMalthe Jakobsen won two races on their way to the championship.[72]
Following the2024 CrowdStrike incident, Kurtz withdrew from racing for the season;[73][74] he returned to motorsport for the2025 24 Hours of Daytona.[75]
(key) (Races inbold indicate pole position; results initalics 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 byAPR | LMP2 | Oreca 07 | Gibson GK428V8 | DAY 2† | SEB 5 | MON 3 | WGL 1 | ELK 7 | IMS 3 | PET 1 | 2nd | 1958 |
| 2024 | CrowdStrike Racing byAPR | LMP2 | Oreca 07 | Gibson GK428V8 | DAY 2 | SEB 9 | WGL 13 | MOS 7 | ELK | IMS | ATL | ||
| Source:[76] | |||||||||||||
† 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 BennettColin BraunMatt McMurry | Ligier JS P320 | LMP3 | 737 | 31st | 5th |
| 2022 | CORE Autosport | Jon BennettColin Braun Niclas Jönsson | Ligier JS P320 | LMP3 | 721 | 16th | 3rd |
| 2023 | CrowdStrike Racing byAPR |  Esteban Gutiérrez Ben HanleyMatt McMurry | Oreca 07 | LMP2 | 761 | 8th | 2nd |
| 2024 | CrowdStrike Racing byAPR | Colin Braun Malthe JakobsenToby Sowery | Oreca 07 | LMP2 | 767 | 10th | 2nd |
| Source:[76] | |||||||
| Year | Team | Co-Drivers | Car | Class | Laps | Pos. | Class Pos. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 |  Algarve Pro Racing |  James AllenColin Braun | Oreca 07 | LMP2 | 322 | 20th | 10th |
| LMP2 Pro-Am | 1st | ||||||
| 2024 | CrowdStrike Racing byAPR | Colin Braun Nicky Catsburg | Oreca 07 | LMP2 | 149 | DNF | DNF |
| LMP2 Pro-Am | |||||||
| Source:[76] | |||||||
| Sporting positions | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Michelin Endurance Cup LMP2 Champion 2023 With:Ben Hanley | Succeeded by Incumbent |
