George Kurtz

George Kurtz
George Kurtz
Born	14 10, 1970
Birthplace	New Jersey, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	CEO and co-founder of CrowdStrike; co-owner and strategic advisor, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team; racing driver
Known for	Co-founding CrowdStrike; co-authoring Hacking Exposed; founding Foundstone
Awards	Fortune 100 Most Powerful People in Business (2024)
Website	[https://www.crowdstrike.com/george-kurtz/ Official site]

George Kurtz (born October 14, 1970) is an American entrepreneur, businessman, and cybersecurity executive who serves as the chief executive officer and co-founder of CrowdStrike, a publicly traded cybersecurity technology company headquartered in Austin, Texas. A central figure in the modern cybersecurity industry, Kurtz built his career across several decades of work in information security, beginning with his founding of Foundstone, a security consulting and products firm, and continuing through a tenure as chief technology officer of McAfee. He is also the co-author of Hacking Exposed: Network Security Secrets & Solutions, a widely referenced book in the field of vulnerability assessment and penetration testing. Beyond the technology sector, Kurtz is a FIA Bronze-rated racing driver who has competed in endurance events including the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the 24 Hours of Spa. In November 2025, Kurtz became a co-owner of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team, acquiring a minority stake from team principal Toto Wolff and taking on a role as technology adviser and steering-committee member. In 2024, Fortune magazine named Kurtz one of the "100 Most Powerful People in Business."

Early Life

George Kurtz was born on October 14, 1970, in New Jersey. He grew up in Parsippany, a suburban community in Morris County. Kurtz developed an early interest in technology and computing, which would later direct the trajectory of his professional life. Details about his family background and upbringing remain largely private, though Kurtz has been described in local New Jersey media as a "Parsippany native" who went on to become a prominent figure in the cybersecurity industry.

Kurtz's formative years coincided with the growth of personal computing in the 1980s and the emergence of the internet in the early 1990s, a period that shaped an entire generation of technology entrepreneurs. His interest in the security dimensions of computing would become the defining thread of his career, eventually leading him to build multiple companies and author influential texts in the cybersecurity field.

Education

Kurtz attended Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree. Seton Hall, a private Catholic university, provided Kurtz with a foundation in accounting and business that would prove useful throughout his career in technology entrepreneurship. His education equipped him with both technical knowledge and business acumen, a combination that distinguished him in the cybersecurity field, where many practitioners came from purely technical backgrounds.

Career

Early Career and Foundstone

Kurtz began his career in cybersecurity during the 1990s, a period when the field was still in its nascent stages. He became involved in security consulting and vulnerability assessment at a time when many organizations were only beginning to understand the risks posed by networked computing environments. Kurtz is credited with helping to create the field of vulnerability management and with defining terminology, workflows, and services that remain central to cybersecurity practice.

During this period, Kurtz co-authored Hacking Exposed: Network Security Secrets & Solutions, a book that became one of the most referenced texts in the cybersecurity field. The book provided detailed guidance on vulnerability assessment and penetration testing methodologies and helped shape best practices across the industry. It went through multiple editions and became a standard reference for both security professionals and students of information security.

Kurtz founded Foundstone, a security products and consulting company that specialized in vulnerability management, incident response, and security training. Foundstone developed a suite of tools and services aimed at helping enterprises identify and remediate security weaknesses in their networks and applications. The company gained a strong reputation in the cybersecurity community and attracted the attention of larger technology firms seeking to bolster their security offerings.

In 2004, McAfee, one of the largest antivirus and security software companies in the world, acquired Foundstone. The acquisition integrated Foundstone's vulnerability management capabilities into McAfee's broader security portfolio and marked a significant milestone in Kurtz's career, transitioning him from startup founder to executive at a major technology corporation.

McAfee

Following McAfee's acquisition of Foundstone, Kurtz took on increasingly senior roles within the company. He was eventually named executive vice president and chief technology officer of McAfee, one of the most prominent positions in the cybersecurity industry at the time. As CTO, Kurtz was responsible for overseeing the company's technology strategy and product direction.

During his tenure at McAfee, Kurtz became a prominent public voice on cybersecurity threats and trends. He spoke publicly about emerging threats, including a campaign he referred to as "Night Dragon," which targeted global energy and petrochemical companies through a combination of social engineering, Windows exploits, and remote administration tools. He also commented publicly on the sophisticated cyberattacks against Google and other major corporations that became known as Operation Aurora, discussing the implications for enterprise security.

Kurtz stepped down from his position as CTO of McAfee in October 2011. His departure, along with that of other high-profile security researchers at the company, was noted in the industry press. Kurtz's time at McAfee had given him deep insight into both the strengths and limitations of traditional, signature-based approaches to cybersecurity — experiences that would directly inform his next venture.

Founding of CrowdStrike

In February 2012, Kurtz co-founded CrowdStrike alongside Dmitri Alperovitch and Gregg Marston. The company launched out of stealth mode with $26 million in funding, an unusually large sum for a cybersecurity startup at the time. The founding thesis of CrowdStrike was rooted in Kurtz's conviction, developed during his years at McAfee, that the traditional approach to cybersecurity — relying on signature-based detection and on-premises hardware — was fundamentally insufficient against the increasingly sophisticated threat actors targeting enterprises and governments.

CrowdStrike's approach was built around a cloud-native architecture, using a lightweight agent deployed on endpoints that fed data to a centralized cloud platform for analysis. This represented a significant departure from the legacy model of deploying heavy, locally installed antivirus software and on-premises security appliances. The company's platform, known as Falcon, leveraged artificial intelligence and behavioral analysis to detect and prevent threats, rather than relying on databases of known malware signatures.

Kurtz's leadership helped position CrowdStrike as one of the fastest-growing companies in the cybersecurity sector. By 2017, CrowdStrike had achieved unicorn status, with a valuation exceeding $1 billion. Kurtz articulated the company's strategy as a platform consolidation play, arguing that enterprises needed to move away from a patchwork of point security products toward a unified platform capable of addressing multiple security domains.

CrowdStrike IPO and Growth

CrowdStrike went public on June 12, 2019, trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol CRWD. The initial public offering sought to raise approximately $100 million and attracted significant investor interest. The company's stock performed strongly in its early days of trading, reflecting investor enthusiasm for cloud-based cybersecurity platforms.

Under Kurtz's leadership as CEO, CrowdStrike expanded its product portfolio beyond its initial endpoint protection focus. The Falcon platform grew to encompass threat intelligence, incident response, IT hygiene, and cloud workload protection, among other capabilities. The company was recognized by multiple industry analyst firms as a leading endpoint security vendor on a global scale. CRN named CrowdStrike among the "10 Hot Cybersecurity Companies to Watch" in 2020.

Kurtz continued to champion the concept of platform consolidation as a strategy for both CrowdStrike and the broader cybersecurity market. In late 2025, he discussed the company's partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the "Falcon Flex" licensing model, and what he described as "incredibly important" partner-related initiatives aimed at accelerating the adoption of the CrowdStrike platform across enterprise customers.

2024 Global IT Outage

In July 2024, CrowdStrike released a software update to its Falcon platform that caused widespread disruption to millions of Microsoft Windows systems around the world. The incident, which resulted from a faulty content update pushed to CrowdStrike's Falcon sensor, caused affected systems to crash and display the Blue Screen of Death. The event impacted airlines, hospitals, financial institutions, and numerous other organizations globally, and has been described as the largest outage in the history of information technology.

As CEO, Kurtz became the public face of CrowdStrike's response to the crisis. The incident drew intense scrutiny from customers, regulators, and the media, and raised questions about the risks associated with the centralized, cloud-based security architecture that CrowdStrike had pioneered. The company undertook remediation efforts and publicly committed to changes in its update deployment processes.

Agentic AI and Recent Developments

In early 2026, Kurtz continued to articulate a forward-looking vision for CrowdStrike, describing 2026 as a "breakout year" for the "Agentic SOC" — a concept referring to the use of agentic artificial intelligence to automate and augment Security Operations Center (SOC) functions.

In February 2026, CrowdStrike's stock experienced a decline following the launch of a new AI-powered security tool by Anthropic, which sparked concerns among investors about potential disruption to established cybersecurity companies. Kurtz publicly responded to the concerns, pushing back on fears that AI tools could replace CrowdStrike's platform.

Personal Life

Motorsport

Outside of his business career, Kurtz is an accomplished amateur racing driver. He holds an FIA Bronze rating and has competed in some of the most prestigious endurance racing events in the world. Kurtz has won the Pro-Am class at both the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the 24 Hours of Spa, two of the most demanding races on the international motorsport calendar.

Kurtz has competed in the Pirelli World Challenge (now SRO America) series in the United States, racing in the GTS class. His involvement in motorsport extends beyond driving; in November 2025, Kurtz acquired a minority ownership stake in the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team from team principal Toto Wolff. As part of the deal, which valued the Mercedes F1 team at approximately $6 billion, Kurtz took on the role of technology adviser and steering-committee member. CrowdStrike had previously served as a sponsor of the Mercedes F1 team, and Kurtz's acquisition of an ownership stake deepened the relationship between the cybersecurity firm and the motorsport organization.

Real Estate

Kurtz owns and develops real estate projects in Scottsdale, Arizona, and elsewhere in the southwestern United States.

Recognition

Kurtz has received recognition from multiple industry and business publications over the course of his career. In 2024, Fortune magazine named him one of the "100 Most Powerful People in Business," reflecting his influence as the head of one of the largest publicly traded cybersecurity companies in the world.

CrowdStrike under Kurtz's leadership has received numerous industry awards and analyst recognitions. The company has been positioned as a leader in endpoint security by major analyst firms and was named among CRN's "10 Hot Cybersecurity Companies to Watch" in 2020.

Kurtz's co-authorship of Hacking Exposed: Network Security Secrets & Solutions has been recognized as a significant contribution to the cybersecurity literature. The book, which went through multiple editions, has been used as a reference and training resource by security professionals and academic institutions.

In the motorsport world, Kurtz's Pro-Am class victories at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the 24 Hours of Spa represent notable achievements for a non-professional driver competing at the highest levels of international endurance racing.

Legacy

George Kurtz's career has spanned the evolution of cybersecurity from a niche technical discipline to one of the most consequential sectors of the global technology industry. His founding of Foundstone helped establish vulnerability management as a distinct practice area within information security. His co-authorship of Hacking Exposed contributed to the development of shared methodologies and best practices for penetration testing and network security assessment.

At CrowdStrike, Kurtz led an industry shift toward cloud-native, AI-powered cybersecurity architectures. The company's Falcon platform represented a departure from the on-premises, signature-based approach that had dominated the antivirus and endpoint security market for decades. By building a cloud-delivered platform that used behavioral analysis and threat intelligence, CrowdStrike under Kurtz's leadership helped redefine how enterprises approach endpoint protection and threat detection.

The 2024 global IT outage associated with a CrowdStrike software update also became a significant chapter in both Kurtz's career and the broader history of information technology, underscoring the risks inherent in the centralized security architectures that CrowdStrike had championed. The incident prompted industry-wide discussions about software update practices, supply chain risk, and the concentration of critical infrastructure dependencies on single vendors.

Kurtz's dual identity as a technology CEO and competitive racing driver has made him a distinctive figure among American business leaders. His acquisition of a minority stake in the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team in 2025 further intertwined his business and motorsport interests, positioning him at the intersection of technology and one of the world's most technologically intensive sports.