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Kurtz is the CEO of CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm that appears to be responsible for the global outage that disrupted flights, stock markets, media outlets, and banks.
Kurtz, 59, is also a Parsippany-Troy Hills native and graduate of Seton Hall University who according to Forbes is worth about $3.1 billion.
How has Kurtz spent his morning? Assuring the world that all will soon be right again after the issue with a Falcon content update for Windows Hosts that caused the global outage.
Kurtz says it wasn't a cybersecurity breach that caused the mass outage Friday morning, which is good! Clearly, he knows his stuff.
In 1999, he co-wrote "Hacking Exposed: Network Security Secrets & Solutions" and would later go on to serve as senior vice president and general manager of risk management at McAfee.
He began working on CrowdStrike, a more modern global IT security company, after joining the private equity firm Warburg Pincus.
His goal with CrowdStrike? "Compel hackers to give up," Fortune writer Robert Hackett wrote in 2015.
CrowdStrike studied the techniques used by hackers, having analyzed data from major hacks in recent years, and came up with a new way to deter the hackers using the cloud, Hackett said citing Kurtz.
So, what went wrong on Friday?
According to NBC, CrowdStrike — which is used by Fortune 500 companies and government agencies that run on Microsoft computers — was trying to deploy a routine update when something went awry.
While a fix has been deployed, there's no word yet on when issues will subside.
Click here for a summary of the crash from CrowdStrike.
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