CrowdStrike Has Achieved A ‘Comeback’ With Help Of ‘Partner-First Strategy’: CEO George Kurtz

The cybersecurity giant has pulled off a ‘comeback story’ since the disruptive IT outage caused by its faulty update last summer, with MSSPs and other partners playing a pivotal role, Kurtz said during the vendor’s quarterly call Tuesday.

CrowdStrike’s rebound since the widely felt July 2024 outage has been bolstered by strong and expanding partnerships within the IT channel, including with partners such as MSSPs that are driving a growing share of the cybersecurity giant’s business, according to CrowdStrike Co-founder and CEO George Kurtz.

During the company’s quarterly call with analysts Tuesday, Kurtz said CrowdStrike has achieved a “comeback story” since the disruptive IT outage caused by the vendor’s faulty update last summer, with partners playing a pivotal role.

[Related: CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz On ‘Incredible’ Partner Response, Microsoft Collaboration After Massive Outage]

Kurtz made the comments as CrowdStrike reported financial results for its fiscal fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2025, ended Jan. 31, and the second full quarter since the outage that affected 8.5 million Microsoft Windows devices and led to several days of disruptions in air travel and numerous other industries.

As indications of CrowdStrike’s reputational and financial recovery from the incident, the company is winding down “customer commitment packages” that had been launched in the wake of the outage to help compensate affected customers, and is now returning its marketing activity to previous levels as well, CFO Burt Podbere said during the call Tuesday.

Even amid the unprecedented difficulties of recent quarters, CrowdStrike has seen its partnerships with MSSPs, global system integrators and other partners become a greater focal point than ever before, Kurtz said.

For instance, “partners sourced 60 percent of our new business in the fiscal year [2025], validating our partner-first strategy and ecosystem investments,” he said.

In particular, CrowdStrike business driven by MSSP partners has been expanding at a “hyper-growth pace, addressing the needs of small to medium businesses who want their cybersecurity program fully managed,” Kurtz said.

MSSPs contributed nearly 15 percent of CrowdStrike’s new business during its fiscal 2025, “signifying a go-to-market that has quickly grown and scaled over the past two years,” he said.

For the fiscal fourth quarter overall, CrowdStrike exceeded Wall Street analyst expectations, with revenue climbing 25 percent to $1.06 billion, compared to the analyst consensus estimate of $1.04 billion.

Other highlights of the quarter included continued growth in its newer segments including cloud security, identity protection and next-generation SIEM (security information and event management), executives said. The three segments totaled $1.3 billion in annual recurring revenue as of the end of the fiscal year, up nearly 50 percent from a year earlier, CrowdStrike disclosed.

The company also provided details on a fourth emerging product segment, exposure management, for the first time during the call Tuesday. CrowdStrike’s exposure management offering “has swiftly become a meaningful contributor to the business with line of sight to $300 million in ARR,” Kurtz said during the call.

The exposure management offering provides “both native vulnerability management for devices and applications, coupled with integrated attack surface management,” he said. “Our customers are already replacing legacy vulnerability management products at scale.”