What happened
Shares of cybersecurity specialist CrowdStrike Holdings (CRWD +1.31%) surged in early trading on the NASDAQ Tuesday, rising 6.3% through 11:15 a.m. EDT -- although it's not entirely clear why.
So what
Yesterday, CrowdStrike announced it has been named to Fortune magazine's 2021 Best Companies to Work For list -- a feather in the company's cap to be sure, which should help with recruitment costs but probably won't move the needle overmuch on the business as a whole.
Separately, The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that rival cybersecurity firm Darktrace is gearing up for a $4 billion IPO. Excitement over that initial public offering could be spilling over to excite investors about CrowdStrike, I suppose.
But honestly, if there's one single factor that I think is most likely to be moving CrowdStrike stock, it's the news over the weekend that someone (perhaps Israel, perhaps us) seems to have conducted a cyberattack on Iran's nuclear weapons research facilities at Natanz, Iran. The incident appears to have caused a blackout at the facility, interrupting the operation of centrifuges used to enrich uranium to the point where it can be used to power nuclear reactors -- or arm nuclear missiles.
Image source: Getty Images.
Now what
Responding to the alleged attack, Iran has threatened to "take action against the perpetrators." And the greater the risk of tit-for-tat cyberattacks grows, the greater the need will be for cybersecurity specialists like CrowdStrike to defend the many targets Iran might select for retaliation.
If that's the scenario investors are betting on with CrowdStrike stock today, I'd say they're probably onto something.
