The editors at Cybercrime Magazine named George Kurtz, CrowdStrike founder and CEO, “Cybersecurity Person of the Year” for his outstanding contributions to the industry in 2024.

On Jul. 19 of this year, Kurtz wrote a letter apologizing for an inadvertent IT outage that affected its customers and partners globally. Although it was not a data breach or cyberattack, the outage was a massive incident. Kurtz immediately stepped forward without a delay, an excuse, or any PR spin. He took complete accountability, explained what caused the outage, and set the stage for a continual stream of communications from CrowdStrike.

Speaking with the Today show, Kurtz said that “we’re deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers, to travelers, to anyone affected by this.”

Fortune reported that three weeks after the faulty software update caused global disruptions, Kurtz flew to Las Vegas to apologize at Black Hat, one of the world’s largest cybersecurity conferences.

Although CrowdStrike rapidly deployed a fix, Kurtz was honest and set expectations around how long it could potentially take for some systems to recover.

Kurtz withstood criticism as could have been expected under the circumstances, but he had far more support from legions of people who have known or followed him for years.

“George Kurtz acted with grace and humility and set an incident response example that boardroom and C-suite executives learned from,” said Steve Morgan, founder of Cybersecurity Ventures. “Far too often, we don’t hear directly from a CEO when an organization suffers any type of major incident that affects its customers and partners. We’ve become accustomed to delayed announcements, spokespersons in place of leaders, and a lack of clarity around what happened and why.”

Kurtz took the outage personally, posted on social media, and made himself available to countless media outlets for months.

Despite distractions due to the outage and response, CrowdStrike has remained focused on serving its customers and partners. This week CrowdStrike announced it was named the AWS 2024 Global Security Partner of the Year, AWS North America Marketplace Partner of the Year, and AWS LATAM Public Sector Technology Partner of the Year – recognizing its critical role in helping customers secure innovation built on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

CrowdStrike marked the fifth anniversary of its IPO earlier this year. Forbes reported that the company stands as a testament to the visionary leadership of Kurtz and the unwavering commitment to cybersecurity innovation.

Previous recipients of the “Cybersecurity Person of the Year” include General Paul Nakasone, commander, U.S. Cyber Command and director, National Security Agency/Chief, Central Security Service, Claire O’Neill, Australia’s Minister for Cyber Security, Jen Easterly, Director of (U.S.) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; Dr. Ambareen Siraj, founder of WiCyS (Women In Cybersecurity); Craig Newmark, philanthropist and founder of craigslist; and Sylvia Acevedo, rocket scientist and former CEO at Girl Scouts of the USA.