Magazine | How and why CrowdStrike has a massive market share

Founded in 2011, CrowdStrike entered the cybersecurity market with its first products in 2013. CrowdStrike Falcon brought advanced antivirus services that helped the company acquire contracts from US government agencies, such as the Department of Justice. CrowdStrike quickly grew as a market leader and has been involved in uncovering hacking efforts made by Russia, North Korea, and China against the US.

In 2016, CrowdStrike garnered the attention of bigger tech companies and VC investors after they revealed the attempts of two Russian agencies to hack numerous US government facilities including the White House. Additionally, they were instrumental in uncovering the hackers responsible for leaking Hillary Clinton’s emails during the election of the same year.  This continued success sparked an influx of investments that helped grow their market value to $11 billion in June 2019 and made them a top choice for cybersecurity with companies like Microsoft.

In 2023, a greater demand for CrowdStrike’s services came with changes made by the US Securities & Exchange Commission. The SEC introduced strict regulations surrounding the reporting of cybersecurity incidents and requires companies to detail the practices they use for risk management, strategy, and governance. The growing popularity of CrowdStrike and its cloud-based services made it easier for companies to meet compliance under these new regulations further growing its market share.

CrowdStrike’s exceptional success is aided by the sustained efforts of its president and chief executive, George Kurtz. Kurtz, a veteran of the industry,  started the anti-virus company “Foundstone” in 1999 which he later sold to McAfee in 2004. After which he served as McAfee’s chief technology officer. During his time at McAfee, Kurtz became increasingly frustrated with the reactive nature of the software and condemned McAfee's development direction in favor of an “intelligence-first” approach which resulted in the creation of CrowdStrike.

With the full scope of the outage being determined, it is clear the incident will impact CrowdStrike’s market share. However, Kurtz’s claims that Microsoft is using "the same failed model that McAfee and Symantec have been using for the past 25 years" mitigate the idea of Microsoft claiming any market share CrowdStrike may lose. The recent unrelated Microsoft Azure outage only contributes to the sentiment.