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George Kurtz (born October 14, 1970) is an American businessman. He is the CEO and founder of the cybersecurity technology company CrowdStrike, and the founder and former CEO of Foundstone, a worldwide security products and anti-virus software company.[2] He is also the author of the best-selling book of all time on cybersecurity, Hacking Exposed: Network Security Secrets & Solutions.[3]
George Kurtz | |
|---|---|
 Kurtz, c. 2016 | |
| Born | October 14, 1970 New Jersey, U.S.[1] |
| Alma mater | Seton Hall University (BS) |
| Occupation(s) | President and CEO of CrowdStrike |
| Spouse | Anna Kurtz |
| Children | 2 |
Kurtz served as executive vice president and chief technology officer of McAfee when that company released a patch that crashed many of its client's computers.[4][5]
In 2024, his company CrowdStrike crashed millions of Windows computers around the world, causing billions of dollars in economic losses in what has been called the largest outage in the history of information technology.[6]
In 2024, Fortune Magazine named Kurtz as the 76th most powerful person in business.[7]
Kurtz is a FIA Bronze-rated race car driver who has won the Pro-Am class in the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the 24 Hours of Spa.[8][9]
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Kurtz grew up in Parsippany–Troy Hills, New Jersey, and attended Parsippany High School.[10][1] 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.[11]
Kurtz received a Bachelor of Science with a major in accounting from the private Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey.[12]
Price Waterhouse and Ernst & Young
After college, Kurtz began his career at Price Waterhouse as a CPA.[13] 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 do pen-testing and locate network risk.[14] Kurtz’ talent at this new concept - penetration testing - led to Price Waterhouse making him a founding employee in the new domain of cybersecurity.[15]
While at Price Waterhouse, and later, when he joined Ernst & Young, Kurtz developed a number of penetration testing and Internet security protocols still in use today.[15] After a few years at Ernst & Young, Kurtz left to start his first company, Foundstone [15]
In 1999, Kurtz 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.[1]
Foundstone
Kurtz’s company Foundstone was started in 1999.[15] 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.[16][17]
McAfee
In August 2004, Foundstone was acquired for $86 million by McAfee, which appointed Kurtz to be senior vice president and general manager of risk management.[16][18]
In October 2009, McAfee promoted him to chief technology officer and executive vice president.[19] Six months later, McAfee accidentally disrupted its customers' operations around the world when it pushed out a software update that deleted critical Windows XP system files and caused affected systems to bluescreen and enter a boot loop. "I'm not sure any virus writer has ever developed a piece of malware that shut down as many machines as quickly as McAfee did today," Ed Bott wrote at ZDNet.[5]
In 2010, Kurtz participated in Operation Aurora, the investigation of a series of cyber attacks against Google and several other companies.[20]
In 2011, he led McAfee's research around the emerging Night Dragon and Shady RAT threats, alongside Dmitri Alperovitch, who was then McAfee's vice president of threat research.[21][22]
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.[23] 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.[24][1] He resigned from McAfee in October 2011.[22]
CrowdStrike
In November 2011, Kurtz joined private equity firm Warburg Pincus as an "entrepreneur-in-residence"[25][26] 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.[27][28] Kurtz pitched the idea for the company to Warburg Pincus and secured $25 million in funding.[11][29]
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 threats.[30][31] The company also developed a "cloud-first" model in order to reduce the software load on customers' computers.[30] CrowdStrike, now headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, attracted public interest in June 2016 for its role in investigating the Democratic National Committee cyber attacks,[24] and in May 2017, the company exceeded a valuation of $1 billion.[32] 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.[33][34] In March 2020, when discussing company strategy at CrowdStrike, he said that "not one time have I regretted firing someone too fast."[35] In July 2020, an IDC report named CrowdStrike as the fastest-growing endpoint security software vendor.[36] He ranked on CRN's 2021 Top 100 Executives list.[37]
In 2023, Kurtz warned of cyber threats from China and criticized Microsoft’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.[38]
In 2024, CrowdStrike was added to the S&P 500. At just five years after going public, this was the fastest a cybersecurity company had ever been listed on the index.[14]
On July 19, 2024, CrowdStrike caused one of the largest information technology outages in history when it pushed out a software update that caused an estimated 8.5 million computers running Microsoft Windows to crash and left them unable to properly restart.[39] 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[40] and "historic in scale".[41] 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".[42]
Forbes estimated his net worth to be $2.3 billion as of July 30, 2024.[43]
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In 2016, Kurtz made his racing debut in the Pirelli World Challenge, driving an Aston Martin Vantage GT4 for TRG-AMR. He remained in the series for the following two years, winning the GTS Am class in 2017 at the wheel of a McLaren 570S GT4.[44][45] In 2019, the championship was renamed the GT World Challenge America, which Kurtz contested with pro driver Colin Braun in the GT3 category.[46] The duo finished fifth in the Pro-Am standings. The duo reunited in 2020,[47][48] when Kurtz made eight podiums, including his first overall win in GT3 machinery at Virginia International Raceway and another victory, to finish as the runner-up of Pro-Am.[49][50]
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's LMP3 category.[51][52] In that series, he competed solely in the endurance events, winning at Sebring and scoring a class podium at Watkins Glen.[53] 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.[54][55]
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.[56] 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.[57] In the Michelin Endurance Trophy, which took into account placings solely within the four endurance races, the Kurtz-Hanley combo came out on top.[58] 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.[59][60] 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.[61] 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.[62]
Following the 2024 CrowdStrike incident, Kurtz indefinitely withdrew from racing.[63][64]
Record
Complete WeatherTech SportsCar Championship results
(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 9 |
WGL 13 |
MOS 7 |
ELK | IMS | ATL | ||
| Source:[65] | |||||||||||||
† 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.
Complete 24 Hours of Daytona results
| 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 |
| Source:[65] | |||||||
24 Hours of Le Mans results
| 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 | ||||||
| 2024 | CrowdStrike Racing by APR |
Colin Braun Nicky Catsburg |
Oreca 07 | LMP2 | 149 | DNF | DNF |
| LMP2 Pro-Am | |||||||
| Source:[65] | |||||||
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