[4] In 2024, his company CrowdStrike crashed millions of Windows computers around the world disrupting air travel, banking, broadcasting, and other services in what has been called the largest outage in the history of information technology.

[10] Kurtz received a Bachelor of Science with a major in accounting from the private Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey.

[14] While at Price Waterhouse, and later, when he joined Ernst & Young, Kurtz developed a number of penetration testing and Internet security protocols still in use today.

[18] The training was based on Kurtz’s book Hacking Exposed and created a global community of cybersecurity professionals well-versed on the new domain of vulnerability management.

[26] On a flight, he watched the passenger seated next to him wait 15 minutes for McAfee software to load on his laptop, an incident he later cited as part of his inspiration for founding CrowdStrike.

[25] In November 2011, Kurtz joined private equity firm Warburg Pincus as an "entrepreneur-in-residence"[28][29] and began working on his next project, CrowdStrike.

He, Gregg Marston (former chief financial officer at Foundstone), and Dmitri Alperovitch co-founded CrowdStrike in Irvine, California, formally announcing the company's launch in February 2012.

[37] CrowdStrike shifted from anti-malware and antivirus products (McAfee's approach to cybersecurity) to identifying the techniques used by hackers in order to spot threats.

[46] This disrupted industries and governmental operations around the world, causing economic losses estimated in the billions of dollars in what has been called the largest IT outage in history[47] and "historic in scale".

[50][51] In 2019, the championship was renamed the GT World Challenge America, which Kurtz contested with pro driver Colin Braun in the GT3 category.

The duo reunited in 2020,[53][54] when Kurtz made eight podiums, including his first overall win in GT3 machinery at Virginia International Raceway and another victory, to finish as the runner-up of Pro-Am.

[55][56] In 2021, Kurtz again raced in the GTWC America series but also in prototype cars, competing in a Ligier JS P320 in the IMSA SportsCar Championship's LMP3 category.

[62] Kurtz and Hanley won at the season-ending Petit Le Mans and another race, but finished second in the standings, edged out by Paul-Loup Chatin and Ben Keating.

[65][66] Finally, he returned to the GTWC America to defend his title, and although Kurtz only finished third in the SRO3 category he claimed Pro-Am honours, having partnered with Braun throughout the year.

[71] (key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; results in italics indicate fastest lap) † Points only counted towards the Michelin Endurance Cup, and not the overall LMP2 Championship.