AI-Native SOC Summit: The Next Generation of SIEM, Here Today

George Kurtz

CEO and Co-Founder, CrowdStrike

George Kurtz is the president, CEO, and co-founder of CrowdStrike, a leading provider of next-generation endpoint protection, threat intelligence, and services. Mr. Kurtz is an internationally recognized security expert, author, entrepreneur, and speaker. He has more than 30 years of experience in the security space, including extensive experience driving revenue growth and scaling organizations across the globe. His entrepreneurial background and ability to commercialize nascent technologies have enabled him to drive innovation to market throughout his career. His prior roles at McAfee, a $2.5 billion security company, include Worldwide Chief Technology Officer and GM as well as EVP of Enterprise.

Prior to joining McAfee, Mr. Kurtz started Foundstone in October 1999 as the founder and CEO responsible for recruiting the other founding team members. Foundstone, a worldwide security products and services company, had one of the leading incident response practices in the industry, and was acquired by McAfee in October of 2004. Mr. Kurtz has been quoted or featured in major publications, media outlets, and television programs including CNN, Fox News, ABC World News, Bloomberg, CNBC, New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Associated Press, Network World, and many others. He also authored the best-selling security book of all time, Hacking Exposed: Network Security Secrets & Solutions.

Mike Sentonas

President, CrowdStrike

Michael Sentonas serves as President and is responsible for CrowdStrike’s product and go-to-market functions, including its sales, marketing, product and engineering, threat intelligence, privacy and policy, corporate development, corporate strategy and CTO teams. A 20-plus year cybersecurity veteran, Mr. Sentonas is an active public authority on security issues and the evolving threat landscape, and is regularly featured as a speaker at key industry events, an expert source in the media, and a trusted advisor to governments and company boards, alike.

Having joined CrowdStrike in 2016, Mr. Sentonas has served in multiple leadership roles, including Vice President, Technology Strategy from May 2016 to February 2020 and Chief Technology Officer from February 2020 until his promotion to President in March 2023. Prior to CrowdStrike, Mr. Sentonas held multiple leadership roles at McAfee, serving as Chief Technology Officer – Security Connected, and Chief Technology and Strategy Officer Asia-Pacific.

Daniel Bernard

Chief Business Officer, CrowdStrike

As CrowdStrike’s chief business officer, Daniel Bernard leads the company’s channel, alliances, and partnership efforts, while driving growth initiatives and go-to-market strategy for the company’s small and medium business (SMB) customer segment.

A dynamic cybersecurity and cloud expert, Mr. Bernard has a strong track record of disrupting markets and accelerating revenue growth through direct and indirect channels. Prior to CrowdStrike, he led channel partnerships and business development at several high-growth SaaS, cloud, and cybersecurity companies, including Dropbox and Cylance. Most recently, he served as SentinelOne’s Chief Marketing Officer and is widely recognized for transforming the company’s brand and market awareness. Mr. Bernard began his career in investment banking, based in Hong Kong and San Francisco.

Jennifer Johnson

Chief Marketing Officer, CrowdStrike

As Chief Marketing Officer, Jennifer Johnson (JJ) is responsible for leading CrowdStrike’s global marketing strategy and execution. JJ is a multiple-time CMO in enterprise software with expertise in cybersecurity. She most recently served as CMO at Illumio, where she was also a member of the Board of Directors. In addition, she was CMO of Tenable (Nasdaq: TENB) and Amplitude (Nasdaq: AMPL), both of which she led through successful public offerings, as well as CMO at Tanium and Coverity (now Synopsys). Outside of her CMO tenures, JJ was a Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where she worked with its enterprise portfolio companies on go-to-market strategy and currently serves on the Board of Directors at Immersive Labs.

Leveraging a 20-year track record in software marketing with expertise in cybersecurity and IT management, Ms. Johnson is a seasoned CMO who has earned a reputation as a bold storyteller well known for helping companies define and dominate market categories.

Elia Zaitsev

Chief Technology Officer, CrowdStrike

Elia Zaitsev leads CrowdStrike technology vision and strategy, notably driving the company’s data science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and malware research functions. Mr. Zaitsev was promoted to CrowdStrike’s Global Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in 2023. He joined the Office of the CTO in 2020 after having led the Americas Sales Engineering organization. He joined CrowdStrike in 2013 as the company’s first sales engineer. Throughout his tenure, he has worked closely as a trusted advisor to CrowdStrike’s largest customers while collaborating with the product and R&D teams to ensure continued customer success and safety through innovation and evolution of the Falcon platform. Prior to CrowdStrike, Mr. Zaitsev was at IBM, i2 Inc. and Northrop Grumman.

Justin Acquaro

Chief Information Security Officer, CrowdStrike

Justin joined CrowdStrike in May 2023 as the Chief Information Security Officer reporting to Shawn Henry. In this role he is focused on building a high performing team and systems that help surface risk, defend against threats attempting to breach our company/customers, empower leaders to make informed cyber risk management decisions, and enable the company to securely grow so we can win in the market and for our customers. 

Justin is a seasoned cybersecurity executive with experience leading global security teams, implementing successful security strategies, securing complex IT/OT environments, and managing compliance matters across a wide array of highly regulated environments. He knows and appreciates the complexities of governance, risk and threat management, incident response, and security architecture and engineering and how to not only lead in these areas but how to set us apart from the competition. 

Prior to this role, Justin served in several large enterprise organizations in various security roles to include as the CISO for Evernorth, a $140B health tech/services business under Cigna, and the Global Chief Information and Product Cyber officer for General Electric. Justin spent 20+ years helping large companies defend and respond to nation state driven attacks. Justin was a member of CrowdStrike’s Customer Advisory Board, so he knows exactly who we are and what we do; he shares our passion for “the mission” and is excited about collaborating across our organization.

Justin holds a Bachelor’s degree in computer science from Dowling College and a Master’s degree in Information Security from James Madison University.