He large-scale computer failure suffered this Friday in various corners of the globe has behind it a cybersecurity giant: CrowdStrikeFounded in February 2012, the growth of this company has been meteoric: to the point where it now calls itself, a decade later, a “world leader” in its segment. “The world’s largest organizations trust us to close their gaps.” [de seguridad]”, he boasts on his corporate website. He backs this up with data: almost 300 of the 500 companies in the index Fortune work with them. Also eight of the ten largest financial services firms in the world. And eight of the ten largest car manufacturers. Without specifying which ones, for obvious reasons.
The company he presides over and directs George Kurtz It prides itself on having “redefined modern security” with one of the “most advanced cloud-native platforms in the world”: Falcon, its crown jewel. With the sole goal of “protecting fundamental aspects of business risk”, feeding on “artificial intelligence, real-time indicators, threat intelligence, information from the evolving tools of adversaries and enriched telemetry” to offer “rapid and scalable deployment, superior protection and performance”.
Today, a day that will go down in history as World Women’s Day blue screensand after Microsoft —pointed out in the first instance— made a full-fledged disclaimer, Crowdstrike is exactly in the opposite place: as the epicenter of a computer crisis that has kept sectors —and users— in suspense in practically every corner of the world. The failure, as Kurtz has explainedonly affects computers running Windows as the operating system. Not those running Mac or Linux.
“It is not a security incident or a cyber attack,” The CEO of the Texan firm tried hard to deny it on social network X hours after the first consequences of the event turned airports, hospitals and other critical infrastructure upside down in the United Kingdom, Spain and Australia. “The problem has been identified and isolated, and a solution has been implemented. We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide full and ongoing updates on our website.” There are several authoritative voices, including that of the Australian consultant Troy Huntwho are already talking about “the biggest crash of a computer system in history.”
Their motto: “The gaps end here”
“They said it was impossible to provide full cloud-native protection (…) without affecting user performance. We have proven them wrong,” reads one of Crowdstrike’s corporate brochures, full of technical jargon that is unintelligible to any lay reader. Author of an annual global cyberthreat report that examines the sector word for word, its corporate motto could not be more direct: CrowdStrike: The Gaps [de ciberseguridad] end here.
Although Falcon is its most prized asset, the Austin-based firm (the youngest city in Texas, where A kind of Silicon Valley bis has been emerging for some time now) offers a comprehensive range of services “24 hours a day, seven days a week” to its nearly 30,000 clients: “Before and after incidents, with assistance before, during and after a security breach. With our teams of experts, you can defend yourself and respond to security incidents, as well as prevent breaches and optimize the remediation process.”
Good performance on the stock market
CrowdStrike’s recent financial performance has been nothing short of remarkable. Better-than-expected earnings of nearly $91 million in the last fiscal year on revenue of $3.1 billion have boosted its stock to record highs, more than quadrupling its market cap in the past five years and doubling it since last summer to more than $83 billion.
A value, to put it in Spanish perspective, slightly higher than that of Iberdrola, the largest electricity company in Europe and the second largest in the world. However, its shares are falling sharply in the pre-opening of the Nasdaq, the selective index of technological stocks on the New York Stock Exchange. It had also just entered the S&P500 —the index that brings together the largest American listed companies— less than a month ago.
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