George Kurtz

Kurtz says rapid global AI adoption is widening the attack surface that security must defend.

The world's adoption of AI is rapidly expanding the attack surface

George Kurtz argues that AI safety is what unlocks AI's full benefits, and that deploying agents with a kill switch keeps organizations in control.

“AI safety is how you get the full benefit of AI,” said CEO George Kurtz in a press release. “When you deploy agents with a kill switch, you stay in control.”

George Kurtz said every company is asking whether AI agents can be stopped, and that CrowdStrike's AI kill switch now makes the answer yes.

Every company is asking the same question about AI agents: can they be stopped? Now the answer is yes,

Kurtz says CrowdStrike's AI kill switch gives AI agents the off button they lacked and will be a crucial part of running agents safely.

"Everyone is building AI agents, but they never had the off button, and now they do," Kurtz told CNBC's Jim Cramer on "Mad Money." "It's going to be an incredibly important part of making sure that AI agents run and operate safely."

Kurtz sees securing AI agents as a massive market opportunity, combining external breach prevention with controls on agent behavior.

"Enabling agents to work safely is a massive market opportunity for CrowdStrike," Kurtz said. "We have AI capabilities to prevent these breaches from happening on the outside, and we also have the capabilities to make sure that agents are basically doing what they are instructed to do."

Kurtz likens the kill switch to airbags, saying safeguards are needed even when AI is designed to work correctly, and agents breaching guardrails can be killed at runtime.

"If they go outside of those guardrails at runtime, we can kill those agents," he said.

Kurtz says enterprise customers demanded CrowdStrike integration with Anthropic before deploying AI, signaling strong demand for its security.

"Our customers went to Anthropic and said, 'We need CrowdStrike before we can deploy AI,'" Kurtz said. "I think it says volumes that customers would not roll out AI without CrowdStrike."

Kurtz argues that AI safety, enabled by tools like a kill switch for agents, lets enterprises capture AI's full benefit, making security both accelerant and safety net for adoption.

AI safety is how you get the full benefit of AI. When you deploy agents with a kill switch, you stay in control. For the first time, security is simultaneously the accelerant and the safety net for technology adoption.

Kurtz argues that AI safety is what unlocks AI's full benefits, and that deploying agents with a kill switch keeps organizations in control.

AI safety is how you get the full benefit of AI. When you deploy agents with a kill switch, you stay in control,

Kurtz said that a kill switch for AI agents will become mandatory for companies, as CrowdStrike unveiled a tool to detect, monitor and stop agents.

“I think the kill switch will be mandatory for companies,” Kurtz said.

Kurtz argues AI agents are the new apex predator, letting any adversary operate with nation-state capability.

Now there's a new apex predator and that's the agent. I call this the rise of the agent state. Because when Apex capability becomes a prompt, there are no tears at all. Every adversary, every ecime crew, every insider now can operate like a nation state.

Kurtz says attacks now run at inference speed, eliminating breakout time and making zero-days into 'minus one days'.

Attacks now happen at inference speed. Inference speed. And when the attacker has inference speed, there is no breakout time. There's actually no time at all. And unfortunately, we won't be calling these zero days. We'll be calling them minus one days.

Kurtz says slowing AI development won't fix risk since frontier and open-weight models are already in adversaries' hands.

The challenge we have now is the genie is out of the bottle. Slowing down future AI development won't fix the risk in front of us. Frontier and open weight models are literally everywhere including in the hands of the adversary.

Kurtz frames the shift from security to AI safety as an accelerator for enterprises rather than a brake.

Security was keep everyone out. Safety is allow our organizations to go faster. And safety isn't the brakes. It's what allows you to run agents and go faster.

Kurtz believes token maxing is ending and open-weight models will drive cost reduction and data sovereignty.

I think all the token maxing might be over. And in fact, now we're hearing more and more on how do we reduce cost. And in my view, open weight models are going to be one of the key areas to help reduce cost and drive this data sovereignty.

Kurtz predicts a massive increase in open-weight models running locally on endpoints.

So here's my prediction. I think there's going to be a massive increase in openw weight models running directly on the endpoint. You can run a 28 billion parameter Quinn model on your desktop.

Kurtz argues general-purpose AI refuses defender tasks, so purpose-built defender AI is needed, motivating CrowdStrike's lab and models.

So the best AI on earth was built for everyone except the defenders for everyone in this audience. General purpose models are built for general purpose and we need everyone in this room needs AI built for the defender.

Kurtz warned that AI without security hands adversaries an opportunity and that security must be built into AI infrastructure from the start.

“Every enterprise is racing to build AI, but AI without security is an opportunity for the adversary,” Kurtz said. VIEW ALL “Security cannot be an afterthought in an AI-powered world.

Kurtz said Falcon's AI-native protection becomes foundational to the Dell and NVIDIA AI Factory, letting enterprises innovate safely at scale.

Dell and NVIDIA are powering the AI revolution, and CrowdStrike is securing it. Together, we’re making Falcon’s AI-native protection foundational to the AI Factory, giving enterprises the confidence to safely innovate at scale on validated, optimised architectures.

Kurtz said every enterprise will run on AI and that securing AI is CrowdStrike's largest market opportunity ever.

Kurtz said every enterprise will run on AI and that securing it is the largest market opportunity in the company’s history.

George Kurtz warns that AI without security gives adversaries an opening and that security must be built in from the start.

“Every enterprise is racing to build AI, but AI without security is an opportunity for the adversary,” said George Kurtz, CEO and founder of CrowdStrike. “Security cannot be an afterthought in an AI-powered world.

George Kurtz warned that vulnerabilities that look impractical to exploit today may become easy targets as AI models improve.

What seems impractical to exploit today could easily be exploitable tomorrow as models advance.

George Kurtz said AI-powered attacks seen by CrowdStrike doubled every month from July to September.

AI-powered attacks observed by CrowdStrike doubled each month from July through September.

George Kurtz says AI has proven that nearly two-decade-old PHP vulnerabilities are exploitable, putting tens of millions of servers at risk and forcing a very rapid patching cycle, with unpatched old routers and firewalls likely to cause massive breaches in coming months.

He emphasized, "You need to focus on the watch, not the calendar."

Kurtz warned that the newly exposed PHP vulnerabilities will lead to many breaches in coming months, affecting tens of millions of internet-exposed servers.

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz warned on Friday that the recently exposed PHP vulnerabilities will cause many breaches in the coming months. Kurtz said tens of millions of servers exposed to the internet are affected.

Kurtz said the AI-discovered PHP vulnerabilities affect tens of millions of internet-facing servers.

"This affects tens of millions of internet-facing servers," CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz told CNBC on Friday.

Kurtz warned that many breaches will result from the PHP flaws in the coming months, since patches are incomplete and old versions remain in use.

"You're going to see a lot of breaches happening in the coming months from this," Kurtz warned.

Kurtz said that with AI-powered attacks doubling monthly from July to September, defenders are unsustainable without defensive AI, which is CrowdStrike's focus.

"It almost becomes unsustainable unless you're using defensive AI to be able to combat what the offense is doing, and that's what CrowdStrike is focused on," he said.

Kurtz warns that the AI-discovered PHP flaw is part of the long tail of vulnerabilities and will lead to many breaches in the coming months, since older PHP versions and internet devices will never be patched.

"This is part of the long tail of these vulnerabilities that we see," Kurtz says. "You're going to see a lot of breaches happening in the coming months from this."

Kurtz warns the PHP vulnerabilities affect tens of millions of internet-facing servers and that AI has now proven it can exploit these decades-old flaws.

This affects tens of millions of servers accessible over the internet. This is a vulnerability that has been around for a long time, several vulnerabilities that are almost 20 years old. And artificial intelligence has now proven the ability to exploit this vulnerability.

Kurtz says old routers, firewalls and devices running outdated PHP will never be patched, leading to many breaches in coming months.

And the most problematic thing, which I think people don't talk about enough , is all the old internet devices, routers, firewalls, and other old devices that use outdated versions of PHP that will never be fixed. There will be a long trail of these vulnerabilities, and you will see many cases of hacking due to this in the coming months.

Kurtz says AI lets low-skill attackers carry out state-level attacks for the cost of tokens, which he calls the scariest development.

We wrote a report on this and see how many different low- skill enemy groups can now conduct state- actor level attacks, effectively for the price of tokens and query . And this is the scariest thing.

George Kurtz warned on CNBC that a PHP vulnerability will lead to many security breaches over the coming months.

many security breaches will occur in the coming months because of the PHP vulnerability.

Kurtz argued that slowing AI model development won't remove cybersecurity risks because many dangerous frontier and open-weight models already exist.

"The genie's out of the bottle," Kurtz said at the time. "There's plenty of models that are already out there, both frontier as well as open-weight models, that can already be dangerous."