Amazon bets big with CrowdStrike on cybersecurity products

Amazon.com Inc. is betting big on cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike Holdings Inc., replacing other defensive tools with the company’s safeguards.

Amazon’s profit-driving cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services, has dropped other security products in favor of CrowdStrike’s cyber threat protection and response offerings, the two companies announced Thursday.

They described this as part of an expanded “strategic partnership” without providing specifics of the financial arrangement.

CrowdStrike’s shares were up about 2% at 9:40 a.m. Thursday in New York.

CJ Moses, Amazon’s chief information security officer, said AWS and other parts of the company have largely completed the adoption of the latest of CrowdStrike’s security monitoring platform, in addition to its services to prevent attacks through compromised employee credentials. Those programs and much of CrowdStrike’s suite of security tools with be rolled out “Amazon-wide” by the end of the year, he said.

“We secure everything from satellites in space to delivery vehicles,” Moses said. The newly adopted CrowdStrike’s products replace some tools Amazon developed itself, he said, as well as products from “individual niche players” that he declined to name.

CrowdStrike Chief Executive Officer George Kurtz said the expanded use by Amazon fits with what his firm has seen from other customers - a desire for simple, unified cybersecurity products. “They want to consolidate to fewer vendors,” Kurtz said, echoing a point previously made by analysts and competitors including Microsoft Corp., the biggest seller of cybersecurity products.