What is CrowdStrike, the company linked to the global tech outage?
George Kurtz founded CrowdStrike in 2012
Airlines, banks, hospitals and companies worldwide have been hit with a Microsoft outage. FOX Business' Gerri Willis with the details.
CrowdStrike Holdings Inc., the company linked to a global outage that affected airlines, emergency services and various businesses from banks to hospitals, is an American cybersecurity technology company based out of Austin, Texas.
The company describes itself as a global cybersecurity leader that's "redefined security with the world’s most advanced cloud-native platform that protects and enables the people, processes and technologies that drive modern enterprise," according to its website.
The company aims to secure critical areas of risk – endpoints and cloud workloads, identity, and data – in order to ensure customers are ahead of today’s adversaries and to prevent breaches.
United Airlines employees wait by a departures monitor displaying a blue error screen after United Airlines and other airlines grounded flights due to a worldwide tech outage caused by an update to CrowdStrikes "Falcon Sensor" software which crashed … (Reuters/Bing Guan)
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The company works with several Fortune 500 companies and has assisted the U.S. government in investigating and tracking North Korean hackers since 2006, according to a company blog post.
FOX Business reached out to CrowdStrike for comment.
Most notably, the company was tasked with investigating the hack of the Democratic National Convention in 2016. The security firm was contacted by the DNC to respond to a suspected cyberattack impacting its network.
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CEO George Kurtz said in a post on X on Friday morning that the outage was "not a security incident of cyberattack."
It was a single "defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts" that was responsible for the massive computer outage, according to Kurtz.
Passengers at Madrid-Barajas airport during the crash of Microsoft's security system that has caused failures at major companies around the world, July 19, 2024, in Madrid, Spain. (Diego Radames/Europa Press via Getty Images) / Getty Images)
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Kurtz said that the issue was "identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed." It is directing customers to the support portal to get the latest updates.
"We further recommend organizations ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels," he wrote. "Our team is fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers."
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| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CRWD | CROWDSTRIKE HOLDINGS INC. | 342.97 | +6.22 | +1.85% |
Kurtz launched the company with a $26 million Series A round in 2012. According to Kurtz's bio, he has had over three decades of experience in the security sector.
Prior to founding CrowdStrike, Kurtz held various roles at McAfee, another major cybersecurity company, including worldwide chief technology officer, general manager and executive vice president of Enterprise.