CrowdStrike: All Systems Down | Guarding the Cloud | 1
Business Wars
Audible
4.6 • 13.5K Ratings
🗓️ 28 January 2026
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 2011, CrowdStrike launched with an innovative vision: using cloud-based software to provide cybersecurity. They attracted big clients, including Fortune 500 companies and critical government agencies. And along the way, they investigated notorious hacks, like the North Korean breach of Sony Pictures, and the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee.
But in 2024, they faced their biggest test of all, when a bug in their own software created the largest I.T outage in world history.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's 3 a.m. on July 19th, 2024. George Kurtz, the co-founder and CEO of the Cybersecurity |
| 0:14.3 | Company CrowdStrike, is asleep when his phone begins ringing on his nightstand. Kurtz awakens, |
| 0:21.5 | disoriented. |
| 0:23.5 | He squints at the screen. |
| 0:27.6 | It's a call from Michael Centonis, Crowdstrikes President. |
| 0:31.3 | That's all Kurtz needs to see. He answers the call immediately. |
| 0:32.1 | Michael. |
| 0:34.6 | Sorry to awake you, but we've got a problem. |
| 0:39.6 | Kurt sits up in bed. How about is it? Devices are crashing all over the world. Many of them are unable to restart and come back online. Is this a Microsoft outage or something? |
| 0:45.0 | Yeah, we thought that too, but it's not Microsoft's Azure platform or Windows. |
| 0:50.3 | There's a pause on the line before Centonis continues. You know, we recently pushed out a routine Falcon update, and right after that, system started failing. |
| 0:59.0 | Kurtz closes his eyes. |
| 1:01.0 | Oh my God. So could this be on us? |
| 1:05.0 | Well, it's looking that way. And George, look, if anyone's running our software rebooted after the update, they're down. |
| 1:13.7 | Airlines, hospitals, banks. |
| 1:15.7 | If we don't find a fix soon, this is only going to get worse. |
| 1:19.7 | Kurt's heart skips a beat. |
| 1:21.9 | This is his worst nightmare. |
| 1:24.7 | Guaranteeing the digital security of major corporations, government services, |
| 1:28.5 | and critical infrastructure is how they built CrowdStrike into a multi-billion dollar company. |
| 1:34.4 | And now, it looks like a mistake from his own team, maybe unleashing global chaos. |
| 1:40.6 | As a young consultant in the 1990s, Kurtz made a career out of breaking into other people's |
... |
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