Beginning its journey in 2011, CrowdStrike that specialises in cloud-delivered endpoint and workload protection, has been making its mark in the cybersecurity industry — the CrowdStrike Falcon platform processes more than five trillion endpoint-related events per week.
How It Started
With online security breaches now a regular staple in news headlines, it is little wonder that investment in cybersecurity companies and technologies has been steadily increasing over the years. Over the last few quarters, investors have ploughed billions of dollars into this space. Now we can add CrowdStrike to the list. Reportedly, the company’s market cap is currently more than $49 billion. And by the time you finish reading this article, CrowdStrike’s flagship platform, Falcon will receive over 1400 net subscriptions like they received in the last quarter.
When it comes to protecting your network and your users from hackers, it’s always best to be ahead of the curve. That’s where a company hailing from California, comes into play. The company provides cloud workload and endpoint security, threat intelligence and cyber-attack response services. It will stop breaches by leveraging its security while you are chilling on your couch. George Kurtz always wanted to bring change in the threat detection industry, and with CrowdStrike’s inception, he brought a new perspective, more effectiveness, better scalability and flexibility by seamlessly aligning people, technology and processes.
The Flagship product, CrowdStrike Falcon platform revolutionised security for the cloud era. Its single lightweight-agent architecture leverages AI and offers real-time protection and visibility across enterprises. The company’s been involved in investigations of several high-profile cyberattacks, including the 2014 Sony Pictures hack, the 2015-16 cyberattacks on the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
Also Read: Top 6 Retail Tech Trends in 2021
What’s Special About CrowdStrike?
- George Kurtz, wanted to bring a revolution in the threat detection industry, with the help of Dmitri Alperovitch (former CTO) and Gregg Marston, together they established the company named ‘CrowdStrike’, in 2011.
- CrowdStrike launched its first and flagship product, CrowdStrike Falcon in 2013, which provides endpoint protection, threat intelligence and attribution. Along with this, CrowdStrike was listed on MIT Tech Review, 50 Disruptive Companies list.
- George always wanted to provide unique solutions to their customers, with this thought they helped the United States Department of Justice in charging five Chinese military hackers for economic cyber espionage against United States corporations, in 2014. 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.
- CrowdStrike uncovered and solved one of the biggest hacks by now, the Sony Pictures hack, which released confidential data from the film studio Sony Pictures. The data included personal information about Sony Pictures employees and their families, emails between employees, information about executive salaries at the company, copies of then-unreleased Sony films, plans for future Sony films, scripts for certain films, and other information.
- According to George, behaviourally looking for Indicators of Attack (IOA) vs. Indicators of Compromise (IOC). Rather than trying to build an ever-stronger perimeter, the discussion has changed substantially. Security professionals are investing more resources than ever before into collecting and analysing vast amounts of user-specific event and access logs which holds the promise of major security benefits.
- In 2015, while releasing the information about VENOM, CrowdStrike found out Chinese cyber venoms attacking technology and pharmaceutical companies.
- And CrowdStrike touched a milestone by expanding in the EMEA region by opening a corporate office in the United Kingdom, in 2016. The expansion came with the heels of exponential growth and global demand for the CrowdStrike Falcon Endpoint Protection Platform.
- CrowdStrike released a research report which shows that 66 per cent of attacks to which the company responded during 2017 were fileless or malware-free. With which the company launched the full next-generation AV module.
- With the launch of a complete module of the flagship product, CrowdStrike reported credentials harvesting operations in the international sporting sector, with possible links to the cyberattack on the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.
- How does the pandemic year look like at CrowdStrike? It acquired Zero-trust and conditional access technology provider Preempt Security for $96 million.
- The Post-pandemic era came with quite happiness at CrowdStrike. It acquired Danish log management platform Humio for $400 million. Google Cloud and CrowdStrike expanded their security service integrations to give joint enterprise customers greater visibility into potential threats to their hybrid cloud deployments and greater protection of their workloads.
Is It The Flagship Product Or The Services?
CrowdStrike unifies the technologies, intelligence and expertise required to stop breaches. Its flagship product, the Falcon Platform, is flexible and extensible when it comes to meeting consumer security needs.
- Falcon Pro: Falcon Endpoint Protection Pro offers the ideal AV replacement solution by combining the most effective prevention technologies and full attack visibility with built-in threat intelligence — all in a single lightweight agent.
- Falcon Enterprise: Falcon Enterprise sets the new standard with the first cloud-native security platform that delivers the only endpoint breach prevention solution that unifies NGAV, EDR, managed threat hunting and threat intelligence automation in a single cloud-delivered agent.
- Falcon Premium: CrowdStrike Falcon Endpoint Protection Premium is the industry’s only unified solution combining next-gen AV (NGAV), endpoint detection and response (EDR), managed threat hunting, integrated threat intelligence and IT hygiene.
- Falcon Complete: The Falcon Complete team is composed of seasoned security professionals who have experience in incident handling, incident response, forensics, SOC analysis and IT administration.
- Incident Response: The CrowdStrike Incident Response (IR) Services team works collaboratively with organisations to handle critical security incidents and conduct forensic analysis to resolve immediate cyberattacks and implement a long-term solution to stop recurrences.
Who Are The People Behind This High-tech Threat Detection Company?
The CrowdStrike leadership is comprised of business leaders and security industry experts, who bring in years of experience together to create security solutions that work. The team cultivate CrowdStrike’s strong culture and work tirelessly to protect enterprises and governments from advanced threats and targeted attacks with cutting-edge technologies and professional services.
Kurtz is an internationally recognised security expert, author, entrepreneur, and speaker. He has more than 28 years of experience in the security space. Shawn Henry serves as the president of CrowdStrike Services. Under his leadership, CrowdStrike engages in proactive and incident response operations across every major commercial sector and critical infrastructure. Colin Black serves as CrowdStrike’s chief operating officer. Burt Podbere serves as the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for CrowdStrike. Marianne Budnik serves as CrowdStrike’s Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) – responsible for the company’s global marketing strategy and integrated marketing programs. Mike Sentonas is CrowdStrike’s Chief Technology Officer. Jerry Dixon serves as the Chief Information Security Officer responsible for protecting CrowdStrike’s information systems across the globe.
Also Read: Company Close-up: A Fresh Start To Customer Engagement
Let’s Talk About The Highlights
Here are a few of the most interesting CrowdStrike statistics and facts we were able to dig up including revenue totals and employee counts.
- CrowdStrike delivered a record fourth quarter and an exceptional finish to a strong fiscal year, achieving over $1 billion in ending ARR. The strong fourth-quarter performance included a record net new ARR of $143 million, 70 per cent net new subscription customer growth YoY, and 77 per cent YoY subscription revenue growth.
- Total revenue was $874.4 million, an 82 per cent increase, compared to $481.4 million in fiscal 2020. Subscription revenue was $804.7 million, an 84 per cent increase, compared to $436.3 million in fiscal 2020.
- Net cash generated from operations was $356.6 million, compared to $99.9 million in fiscal 2020. Free cash flow was $292.9 million, compared to $12.5 million in fiscal 2020.
- Added 1,480 net new subscription customers in the quarter for a total of 9,896 subscription customers as of January 31, 2021, representing 82 per cent growth year-over-year.
- Acquired Humio, a leading provider of high-performance cloud log management and observability technology.
- Integrated CrowdStrike Falcon’s threat intelligence feeds with AWS Network Firewall, a managed service that makes it easy to deploy essential network protections across a customer’s Amazon Virtual Private Clouds.
- Released the annual CrowdStrike Services Cyber Front Lines Report and the annual Global Threat Report, revealing critical insights and takeaways.
