CrowdStrike gets infusion of funds to continue growth and innovation

When 2013 kicked off CrowdStrike was barely known outside of inner-sanctum security circles. The stealth startup–founded by former Foundstone CEO, McAfee CTO, and co-author of the vaunted Hacking Exposed books George Kurtz–was essentially unveiled to the world at large at the RSA Security Conference in February. Fast forward seven months, and CrowdStrike is making waves in the security industry with an innovative approach to protecting against threats, and significant investor support. 

CrowdStrike announced that just raised $30 million in Series B financing, led by its founding investor, Warburg Pinucs, and Accel Partners–which will now have a seat on the CrowdStrike board of directors as well. The financing gives CrowdStrike an infusion of cash to drive continued research and innovation.

CrowdStrike is one of the leaders in the emerging next-generation security space. A number of companies, such as CrowdStrike and Cylance (founded by Stuart McClure–Kurtz’s co-founder at Foundstone, and co-author of Hacking Exposed, as well as a former McAfee CTO himself) represent a sort of changing of the guard for security. These respected information security experts recognized through years of experience the inherent weaknesses of the traditional security industry, and they’re attempting to shift gears and take a more proactive–and hopefully more effective–approach to defending against threats. 

“The completion of our funding is perfectly timed to meet growing demand for targeted attack detection, prevention, and monitoring,” says George Kurtz, President/CEO & Co-Founder of CrowdStrike in a press release quote. “Accel Partners has a thorough understanding of the big data sector and has displayed continued commitment to the market with their big data fund. We’re looking forward to deep collaboration with Accel Partners and Warburg Pincus as we work together to combat the proliferation of advanced attacks and increasingly sophisticated cyber threats.”  

CrowdStrike’s cloud-based threat protection platform relies on big data analysis techniques to provide execution profiling and predictive security analytics. Big data has been a growing buzzword for the tech world in general, but it is particularly effective for security applications. Applying big data techniques to massive reserves of network traffic and behavior data enables CrowdStrike to identify patterns and anomalies that might be cause for concern. Mixing big data and more traditional security intelligence techniques, CrowdStrike claims to identify unknown malware, detect zero-day threats, pinpoint advanced adversaries and attribution, and prevent damage from targeted attacks in real-time. 

“CrowdStrike has seen phenomenal growth over the last two years and has executed on an innovative approach to solving the targeted attack and advanced threat problem that enterprises are facing today,” says Joseph P. Landy, Co-President, Warburg Pincus. “With an experienced leadership team at its helm and top talent companywide, CrowdStrike is well positioned to continue disrupting the market and providing customers with a truly unique solution.”