CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz is at the center of another significant tech disruption. A recent Microsoft outage, caused by a faulty CrowdStrike update, mirrors a past incident during his tenure at McAfee. In 2010, as McAfee’s Chief Technology Officer, Kurtz witnessed a security update crash tens of thousands of computers worldwide, requiring a manual fix.
On July 19, 2024, a similar crisis unfolded when thousands of Microsoft Windows computers crashed due to a defective update in CrowdStrike Falcon, a critical cybersecurity tool. The disruption impacted essential services such as air travel, credit card payments, emergency services, and stock markets.
A social media post by user Anshel Sag highlighted this connection via Kurtz’s LinkedIn page, recalling the 2010 McAfee glitch with Windows XP, which led to significant internet disruptions. This past incident eventually contributed to McAfee’s sale to Intel.
The financial fallout for Kurtz was immediate. His net worth dropped by over $300 million as CrowdStrike’s stock fell by 11%. Forbes reported his net worth at $3.2 billion on Thursday, but by Friday, it had declined to $2.9 billion.
Kurtz issued an apology, acknowledging the severity of the situation and emphasizing that the issue was quickly identified and resolved. He stated, “I want to sincerely apologize directly to all of you for the outage. All of CrowdStrike understands the gravity and impact of the situation. We quickly identified the issue and deployed a fix, allowing us to focus diligently on restoring customer systems as our highest priority.”
CrowdStrike reported that many of the 8.5 million affected devices are now operational again. The company is also implementing a new technique to accelerate the remediation process and minimize further disruption.
