Amazon.com is betting big on cybersecurity company CrowdStrike Holdings Inc., replacing other defensive tools with the safeguards offered by the cyber defense specialist. The cloud computing business that drives Amazon’s profits, Amazon Web Services, has shelved other security products in favor of CrowdStrike’s cyber threat protection and response offerings.
They described this as part of an expanded “strategic partnership” without providing specific details of the financial agreement. CJ Moses, director of information security at Amazon, assured that AWS and other subsidiaries of the multinational have largely completed the adoption of CrowdStrike’s latest security monitoring platform, in addition to its services to prevent attacks through credentials. of committed employees.
Moses explained that those programs and much of CrowdStrike’s suite of security tools will be rolled out “across Amazon” by the end of the year. “We secure everything from satellites in space to delivery vehicles,” said Moisés. CrowdStrike’s newly adopted products replace some tools that Amazon developed internally, as well as products from “individual niche players” that they decline to name.
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said Amazon’s expanded use of its products matches what his firm has seen from other clients: a desire for simple, unified cybersecurity products. “They want to consolidate with fewer vendors,” Kurtz said, repeating a point made earlier by analysts and competitors, including Microsoft, the largest seller of cybersecurity products.
CrowdStrike’s use of Amazon Web Services to incorporate AI capabilities into its platform is not surprising, given that both Microsoft and Google continue to add security capabilities to include in their other cloud offerings. We believe CrowdStrike’s leadership in the endpoint security category could be even stronger with its expanding product suite and growing exposure to cloud workloads.
Consensus sales for the first quarter have increased slightly for cloud security vendors Zscaler and CrowdStrike, but have decreased for firewall security peers such as Fortinet and Palo Alto Networks due to a slowdown in firewall updates. Estimates could increase overall due to increased cybersecurity threats due to the war in the Middle East. The security package and copilot launches bode well for cloud security players, which continue to expand their product lines through mergers and acquisitions.
