Cybersecurity is big business. The threats to company and government networks multiply daily, and every device connected to the internet is at risk.
Former FBI Director Robert Mueller once said, "There are only two types of companies: Those that have been hacked, and those that will be hacked." It's a disconcerting sentiment, but likely an accurate statement.
Everyone, be it an individual, a company, or a government, is vulnerable to cyberattack. Microsoft reported in 2024 that there were 600 million cyberattacks around the world daily. And that's likely a conservative estimate.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has only made the problem worse, according to researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who reported that the technology had opened the door to smarter phishing attacks, deepfake video or audio, and even autonomous attacking programs. At least hackers used to need to eat and sleep, but now they can have machines do all the work for them.
Fortunately, these modern problems have a modern solution in the form of CrowdStrike (CRWD 0.13%) and its Falcon software.
Image source: CrowdStrike.
A cyber shield, a digital sword
CrowdStrike takes a novel approach to cybersecurity. Its cloud-native software, dubbed Falcon, takes into account security data from all of its users and uses that data to automate security for everyone on that network.
That alone works wonders for the company's clients, which include city and state governments and companies across 21 different industries. The software has a four-minute mean time to detect a threat, companies that use it see a 75% reduction in mean time to respond to said threat, and the software resolves more than 13 million detected threats each year.
But CrowdStrike does more than defense.
There are lots of programs you can use to make your system a harder target for a hacker. But those programs usually have two major problems. First, the vast majority of them are focused only on one element of cybersecurity, like identity, data protection, or AI-based attacks. Falcon protects against just about any cybersecurity threat you can imagine. That means it's only one platform to learn and track, and only one you need to pay for as well.
Second, if a hacker manages to get past one of those programs, they can then stay in your system and collect data, login credentials, or sensitive material until you detect them. A shield is great, but if an enemy gets past it, what you need is a sword.
And Falcon is that sword. The software actively hunts for threats in its network, alerting the concerned parties' security teams to root out those threats, and strengthening the CrowdStrike network against them in the future.
And once Falcon does that for one of the users in its network, it's able to protect everyone else in the network against the same threat. It's a self-hardening shield and a self-sharpening sword.
It's also making incredible money in a total addressable market it predicts will be worth $140 billion in 2026 and as much as $300 billion by 2030.
Worth the price of admission
At present, CrowdStrike stock trades at about $460 per share and its market cap is $121 billion, but it's growing like a much smaller company.
As of its latest results for Q3 fiscal 2026 (which ended Oct. 31, 2025), CrowdStrike saw its subscription revenue increase 21% year over year, its new annual recurring revenue (ARR) increase 73%, and its total revenue climb 22% overall. And despite its relatively high valuation compared to its peers, CrowdStrike's 22% revenue growth rate outstrips its main competitors like Palo Alto Networks at 15.3% and Fortinet at 14.8%.
The company also recorded diluted EPS growth of 26% year over year, and free cash flow grew 28% over the same period.
Finally, CrowdStrike has $4.8 billion in cash and cash equivalents compared to $818 million in total debt, which is something to be lauded in a market where many companies run high debt loads.
NASDAQ: CRWD
Key Data Points
Go with the crowd on this one
In all, despite its already high share price, CrowdStrike still has plenty of room to grow, especially if its total addressable market hits $300 billion by the end of the decade, as it anticipates.
It has already nearly doubled the S&P 500's performance in the past year, it routinely beats the index with a five-year annualized return of 16.4% to the S&P 500's 12.8%, and its growth is showing no signs of stopping.
Sometimes it's better to go with the crowd, and with CrowdStrike's software becoming more capable with each new customer, it likely won't pay to be a contrarian when the company captures a multibillion-dollar market.
