George Kurtz is the co-founder and CEO of CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company. He was also the founder of Foundstone and chief technology officer of McAfee.
Early life and education
George Kurtz grew up in Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey and attended Parsippany High School. Kurtz claims he was in fourth grade when he started programming video games on his Commodore. When Kurtz was in high school, he went on to build bulletin board systems. Kurtz earned a degree in accounting from Seton Hall University in 1992.
Early career
In 1991, George Kurtz worked at Pricewaterhouse Coopers, LLP as a manager. Kurtz developed the first ever Internet pen-testing methodology for all of Price Waterhouse and led an elite team of consultants around the United States, until 1998.
After his career at PwC, Kurtz served as a senior manager and the national leader of Ernst & Young’s Security Profiling Services Group. Kurtz was responsible for performing and managing a variety of eCommerce related security engagements with clients in financial services, retailing, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and high technology industries.
Foundstone
In 1999, George Kurtz co-wrote Hacking Exposed, a book for network administrators about cyber-security, with Joel Scambray and Stuart McClure. The book has sold more than 600,000 copies and with more than 30 different languages in translation. Later that year, Kurtz started a cyber-security company called Foundstone, one of the first dedicated security consulting companies, along with Chris Prosise, Eric Schultze, Gary Bahadur, Stuart McClure, and William Chan in Orange County, California Area.
George Kurtz, as a co-founder and CEO of the company, was responsible for recruiting the other six founding team members. Kurtz led the company from concept to $28M run-rate when it was acquired by McAfee in October 2004 for nearly $90M. Kurtz was responsible for the health and operating excellence of the company while directly managing all functions, including sales, finance, marketing, HR, legal, professional services, and technology. Kurtz extensively with the CFO to create all operating budgets and was responsible for forecasting, budgeting, and operating expense margins while managing the entire P&L.
George Kurtz recruited and led the entire Board of Directors from inception to acquisition. Kurtz directly sourced and secured all funding of rounds (A/B/B1), and was personally responsible for leading the negotiations and consummating the sale to McAfee. Under Kurtz’ leadership, the company received numerous awards, including: Inc.’s 500 Top 500 Companies, Software Council of Southern California’s, “Software Entrepreneur of the Year 2003”, “Software CEO of the Year 2005”, Fast Company’s “Fast 50”, AeA’s “Outstanding Executive”, Deloitte’s “Fast 50”, Ernst & Young’s “Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist”, Orange County’s “Hottest 25 People”, and numerous other accolades and mentions.
McAfee
After the acquisition in 2004, Kurtz held the title of general manager and senior vice president of risk management at McAfee. During his tenure, Kurtz helped craft the company’s strategy for security risk management. Kurtz was responsible for P&L and Go-To-Market Strategy for the Risk and Compliance Business Unit (BU), which became the Corporate Security BU (a $1.5B annual revenue stream for McAfee). Kurtz’s responsibilities included business operations, strategy, revenue bookings, cost and margin control, product sales, and marketing strategies. Identified the industry need and executed on moving McAfee into the emerging embedded security space by orchestrating the acquisition of SolidCore and doubling this new McAfee portfolio offering in less than one year.
In October 2009, McAfee designated Kurtz to the roles of executive vice president and worldwide chief technology officer. Kurtz was responsible for the creation of the Office of the CTO, driving the integrated security architectures and platforms of this $3B product business that had propelled McAfee into a leadership position in digital security. Kurtz ability to commercialize nascent technologies and his entrepreneurial background equipped him to manage innovation throughout McAfee by distinguishing market trends and correlating them with customer feedback to optimize product direction and development. In 2010, Kurtz participated in Operation Aurora, the investigation of a series of cyber-attacks against Google and several other companies. In 2011, Kurtz led McAfee’s research around the Shady RAT threats and the emerging Night Dragon, alongside Dmitri Alperovitch, McAfee’s vice president of threat research.
Kurtz was heavily involved in M&A activities and helped drive new technology acquisitions during his 7-year tenure at McAfee. Over time, Kurtz became frustrated that the current security technology ran slowly and was not, as he observed it, evolving at the pace of new threats. On a flight, Kurtz 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. In October 2011, Kurtz resigned from McAfee.
CrowdStrike
In 2011, after Kurtz resigned from McAfee, he co-founded CrowdStrike, along with Gregg Marston and Dmitri Alperovitch. In 2012, the company hired Shawn Henry, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) executive who led both the FBI’s criminal and cyber divisions, to lead sister company CrowdStrike Services, Inc., which is concentrated on proactive and incident response services.
The company has gained recognition for providing threat intelligence and attribution to nation-state actors conducting economic espionage and IP theft; this includes the outing of the state-sponsored Chinese group, Putter Panda, linked to China’s spying on the United States defense and European satellite, and aerospace industries. In May 2014, supported by CrowdStrike’s reports, the United States Department of Justice charged five Chinese military hackers for economic cyber-espionage against the United States corporations. Furthermore, the company is known for revealing the activities of Energetic Bear, an adversary group with a nexus to the Russian Federation that handles intelligence regulations against a variety of global victims with a focus on the energy sector.
After the very public Sony Pictures hack, CrowdStrike provided attribution to the North Korean government within 48 hours and illustrated how the attack was conducted out step-by-step. On May 2015, the company issued Researcher Jason Geffner’s discovery of VENOM, a crucial flaw in open source hypervisor called Quick Emulator (QEMU), which is applied in several common virtualization outcomes.
In 2013, CrowdStrike launched a technology that prevents breaches called the Falcon software platform, by connecting next-generation antivirus, endpoint detection and response, and proactive hunting. In 2014, the company was instrumental in distinguishing members of PLA Unit 61486 as the perpetrators of various cyber-attacks on the US infrastructure.
Funding
On February 23, 2012, CrowdStrike revealed a $26 million in a Series A investment from Warburg Pincus.
On September 9, 2013, CrowdStrike raised $30 million in a Series B investment led by Accel for its security technology to identify advanced threats and put adversaries more on the defensive. Founding investor Warburg Pincus also participated in the funding.
On July 13, 2015, CrowdStrike landed a $100 million in its Series C investment, led by Google Capital with Rackspace, which happens to be one of the company’s customers also investing. Existing investors Accel and Warburg Pincus also participated. The investment brings the total to-date to $156 million.
On May 17, 2017, CrowdStrike raised $100 million and the company valued at $1 billion, led by existing investor Accel, with participation from CapitalG and three of its customers: March Capital Partners, Warburg Pincus, and Telstra, the Australian carrier. On October 19, 2017, CrowdStrike raised additional funding of $25 million. The investment was a follow-on to its oversubscribed $100 million Series D round to accommodate investor interest, according to a company spokeswoman. CapitalG, previously Google Capital, led the round.
On June 19, 2018, CrowdStrike raised $200 million in a Series E investment, which values the company at more than $3 billion.
Personal life
George Kurtz is married to Anna and has two children.