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Complexity kills, speed is the cure
Get ready for the insights shared at Fal.Con 2023! One of the core themes discussed is the impact of complexity on cloud security. According to CrowdStrike, adversaries are increasingly targeting complex cloud configurations, with cloud exploitation rising by 95% year-over-year. The more complex the configuration, the higher the chances of misconfigurations and the harder it becomes to detect and fix errors after a breach.
CrowdStrike’s president, CEO, and co-founder, George Kurtz, highlighted the unmatched speed at which threat actors operate. They leverage social engineering, infiltrate networks, and move laterally with ease. Kurtz believes that these threat actors often have a better understanding of the network than the system administrators themselves.
Identity-based attacks are a significant concern, accounting for 62% of all interactive intrusions observed by CrowdStrike in the past year. In Q2 alone, CrowdStrike noticed a surge in attacks resembling recent high-profile incidents on critical infrastructure organizations. To combat these threats, CrowdStrike relies on AI and human observations to enhance their detection and response capabilities.
CrowdStrike is setting a fast pace in the generative AI cybersecurity race
CrowdStrike takes pride in being an AI-native company, and they continue to strengthen their AI capabilities. During the keynote, George Kurtz showcased Charlotte AI Investigator, an innovative AI assistant. Charlotte AI harnesses the power of conversational AI to accelerate threat detection, investigation, and response through natural language interactions. By generating incident summaries using large language models (LLMs), Charlotte AI saves security analysts valuable time in analyzing breaches.
Kurtz’s dedication to understanding the challenges faced by security analysts led him to spend time in customers’ Security Operations Centers (SOCs). This firsthand experience influenced the development of Charlotte AI, which significantly reduces the time required for investigating and responding to threats. The tool leverages massive datasets and human-validated threat intelligence.
Charlotte AI will be rolled out to all CrowdStrike Falcon customers over the next year, starting with initial upgrades in late September 2023 on the Raptor platform. Raj Rajamani, CrowdStrike’s chief product officer, emphasized how Charlotte AI automates repetitive tasks, making security analysts two or three times more productive. The integration of Charlotte AI into CrowdStrike’s graph database architecture enhances its capabilities across endpoints, cloud, and identities.

Bionic strengthens CrowdStrike’s cloud security portfolio
Cloud exploitation attacks continue to rise, with a 95% increase year-over-year. To combat this growing threat, CrowdStrike made a strategic acquisition of Bionic. This acquisition enhances CrowdStrike’s application security and posture management, strengthening their cloud workload protection strategy and driving new revenue from cloud security.
During the recent CrowdStrike earnings call, George Kurtz highlighted the accelerated growth of Falcon Cloud Security, with net new annual recurring revenue (ARR) reaching 70% quarter over quarter. The cloud security market opportunity is massive and projected to reach $18 billion by 2026.
CrowdStrike’s acquisition of Bionic provides a comprehensive view of all cloud activity, ensuring robust protection for cloud environments. It also enables CrowdStrike to offer consolidated cloud-native security on a unified platform. Bionic’s unique capability to analyze cloud apps and infrastructure without source code access or instrumentation makes it an ideal fit for CrowdStrike’s cloud-first customer base.
CrowdStrike’s strategy of selling platform consolidation is working
CrowdStrike’s strategy of enabling customers to consolidate their tech stacks onto the Falcon platform is proving successful. By consolidating tools, organizations improve security outcomes, increase productivity, and reduce costs and complexity. CrowdStrike stands out from competitors like Palo Alto Networks by maintaining an open and extensible ecosystem that adapts to the unique needs of its customers, even down to the chipset and silicon level.
Customers who have embraced CrowdStrike’s platform consolidation approach have experienced significant benefits. They have reduced the number of agents on endpoints while gaining greater visibility across their IT infrastructure. This strategy, combined with CrowdStrike’s commitment to openness and flexibility, has been a driving force behind their success.
During its latest earnings call, CrowdStrike revealed some impressive statistics. The company reported that the number of subscription customers with five or more modules increased to 63%, while those with six or more modules rose to 41%, and customers with seven or more modules reached 24%. This demonstrates the growing demand for CrowdStrike’s services.
Kurtz, the CEO of CrowdStrike, highlighted the company’s success in the second quarter, stating that they closed over 80% more deals involving eight or more modules compared to the previous year. This indicates that customers are increasingly turning to CrowdStrike to consolidate their security stack.
In addition to these achievements, CrowdStrike exceeded expectations in Q2’24 with a remarkable 37% revenue growth and achieved a record 21% non-GAAP operating margin. The company is confident in sustaining this profitability in the future and aims to meet their target model by the end of Q4.
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