CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. is a cybersecurity technology company based in Sunnyvale, California. It provides endpoint security, threat intelligence, and cyberattack response services.^[1] The company has been involved in investigations of several high profile cyber-attacks, including the Sony Pictures hack,^[2] the 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak, and the Democratic National Committee cyber attacks.^[3]

CrowdStrike was co-founded by George Kurtz (CEO),^[4][5] Dmitri Alperovitch (CTO),^[6] and Gregg Marston (CFO, retired) in 2011.^[7][8] In 2012, Shawn Henry, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) official who led both the FBI's criminal and cyber divisions, was hired to lead sister company CrowdStrike Services, Inc., which focused on proactive and incident response services.^[9] In June 2013, the company launched its first product, CrowdStrike Falcon.^[10] The company became known for providing threat intelligence and attribution to nation state actors^[11] that are conducting economic espionage and IP theft.^[12]

In May 2014, supported by CrowdStrike's reports, the United States Department of Justice charged five Chinese military hackers for economic cyber espionage against United States corporations. CrowdStrike also uncovered the activities of Energetic Bear, a group connected to the Russian Federation that conducted intelligence operations against global targets, primarily in the energy sector.

After the Sony Pictures hack, CrowdStrike produced evidence implicating the government of North Korea within 48 hours, and demonstrated how the attack was carried out.^[13] In 2014, CrowdStrike played a major role in identifying members of Putter Panda, the state-sponsored Chinese group also known as PLA Unit 61486, perpetrators of a cyberattacks on U.S. infrastructure and defense, as well as on European satellite and aerospace industries.^[14][15]

In May 2015, the company released researcher Jason Geffner's discovery of VENOM, a critical flaw in an open-source hypervisor called Quick Emulator (QEMU),^[16] which is used in a number of common virtualization products. This vulnerability could allow attackers to access sensitive personal information.^[17] In October 2015, CrowdStrike announced that it had identified Chinese hackers attacking technology and pharmaceutical companies immediately before and after President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping publicly agreed not to use cyber-spies to conduct economic espionage against the other. The alleged hacking would have been in violation of that agreement.^[18]

CrowdStrike released research in 2017 showing that 66 percent of the attacks to which the company responded that year were fileless or malware-free. The company also compiled data on the average time needed to detect an attack and the percentage of attacks detected by organizations themselves.^[19]

In February 2018, CrowdStrike reported that in November and December 2017 it had observed a credential harvesting operation in the international sporting sector, with possible links to the cyber attack on the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.^[20] That same month, Crowdstrike released research showing that 39 percent of all attacks observed by the company were malware-free intrusions. The company also named which industries attackers most frequently targeted.^[21] That March, the company released a version of its Falcon product for mobile devices and launched the CrowdStrike store, which opens the Falcon platform to third-party applications.^[22]

In January 2019, CrowdStrike published research reporting that Ryuk ransomware, used by cyber actor Grim Spider to target businesses, had accumulated more than $3.7 million in cryptocurrency payments since it first appeared in August.^[23]

Also in 2019, CrowdStrike released its 2018 Global Threat Report, which ranked cybercriminals in order of fastest actors to operate within a network, with Russia coming in first.^[24][25] The company also revealed that it tracked 81 named state-sponsored actors in 2018, and at least 28 were conducting active operations throughout the year. The research showed that of the sophisticated attacks that the company attributed to nation-states, China was responsible for the plurality: more than 25 percent.^[26]

In July 2015, Google invested in the company's Series C funding round which was followed by Series D ^[27] and Series E^[28] raising a total of $480 million as of May 2019.^[29] In June 2018, the company said it was valued at more than $3 billion.^[30] Investors include Telstra, March Capital Partners, Rackspace, Accel Partners and Warburg Pincus.^[31][32]

Estimated annual revenue in 2017 was $100 million, and the company had a valuation of more than $1 billion.^[33] Investors included Telstra, March Capital Partners, Rackspace, Accel Partners and Warburg Pincus.^[34][35]

In June 2019, the company made its IPO on the NASDAQ.^[36][37]

CrowdStrike helped investigate the Democratic National Committee cyber attacks and connected those attacks to Russian intelligence services. On March 20, 2017, during testimony before congress, James Comey stated "CrowdStrike, Mandiant, and ThreatConnect review[ed] the evidence of the hack and conclude[d] with high certainty that it was the work of APT 28 and APT 29 who are known to be Russian intelligence services."^[38]

In December 2016, CrowdStrike released a report stating that Russian government-affiliated group Fancy Bear had hacked a Ukrainian artillery app.^[39] They concluded that Russia had used the hack to cause large losses to Ukrainian artillery units. The app (called ArtOS) is installed on tablet PCs and used for fire-control.^[40] The earliest version of the app (supported until 2015) was called POPR-D30 and installed on Android phones and tablets. CrowdStrike found a hacked variation of POPR-D30 being distributed on Ukrainian military forums that utilized an X-Agent implant.^[41]

The International Institute for Strategic Studies rejected CrowdStrike's assessment of hacking causing losses to Ukrainian artillery units, saying that their data on Ukrainian D30 howitzer losses was misused by CrowdStrike in their report. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense also rejected the CrowdStrike report, stating that actual artillery losses were much smaller than what was reported by [CrowdStrike] and were not associated with [Russian hacking].^[42]

Cybersecurity firm SecureWorks discovered a list of email addresses targeted by Fancy Bear in phishing attacks.^[43] The list included the email address of Yaroslav Sherstyuk, the developer of ArtOS.^[44] Additional Associated Press research supports CrowdStrike's conclusions about Fancy Bear.^[45] Radio Free Europe notes that the AP report "lends some credence to the original CrowdStrike report, showing that the app had, in fact, been targeted."^[46]

Following CrowdStrike's investigation of the 2016 Democratic National Committee hacks, journalist Yasha Levine questioned CrowdStrike's methodology, citing it as "forensics in reverse."^[47]

In the Trump–Ukraine controversy, a transcript of a conversation between Donald Trump, the president of the United States, and Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, Trump asked Zelensky to look into CrowdStrike's activities in Ukraine.^[48]

In 2014 and 2015, CRN Magazine named the company to its Top Emerging Vendors List.^[49]

In 2016, the company was ranked #40 on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500, North America list,^[50] and Inc. named CrowdStrike as one of America's 500 fastest-growing companies.^[51]

In 2017 and 2018, CrowdStrike was listed on LinkedIn’s Top Companies: Start Ups,^[52][53] on the Forbes Cloud 100,^[54][55] and as one of the CNBC Disruptor 50.^[56][57]

Fortune has given CrowdStrike three of its "Great Place to Work" awards,^[58][59] and Inc. has praised the company's remote work program.^[60]