CrowdStrike's new kill switch can stop rogue AI agents in their tracks, CEO says

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said Tuesday that the cybersecurity company can now shut down rogue artificial intelligence agents.

CrowdStrike's new kill switch, announced Tuesday at its Fal.Con Europe conference, allows security teams to terminate misbehaving agents, prevent them from restarting and cut off their network access. It is designed to give humans more power over artificial intelligence models and systems, as concerns about how to control agents grow.

"Everyone is building AI agents, but they never had the off button, and now they do," Kurtz told CNBC's Jim Cramer on "Mad Money." "It's going to be an incredibly important part of making sure that AI agents run and operate safely."

The AI Kill Switch, as CrowdStrike calls it, is part of the company's Falcon Guardian platform, which monitors AI agents operating within an organization. The technology, which is available immediately, is aimed at addressing AI safety concerns surrounding the rapid adoption of AI agents.

In September, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for slowing AI development over safety concerns, a position backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Kurtz argued at the time that slowing AI development would not eliminate existing security risks, which he said underscored the need for safeguards as companies deploy autonomous systems.

Kurtz said Tuesday that CrowdStrike's new kill switch represents a significant shift in cybersecurity, which has traditionally focused on protecting companies from external threats. As businesses rely more on AI agents, he argued that security providers must also ensure those systems operate safely within their own organizations.

"Enabling agents to work safely is a massive market opportunity for CrowdStrike," Kurtz said. "We have AI capabilities to prevent these breaches from happening on the outside, and we also have the capabilities to make sure that agents are basically doing what they are instructed to do."

The CEO compared the technology to airbags in cars, arguing that safeguards are necessary even when AI systems are designed to operate correctly.

"If they go outside of those guardrails at runtime, we can kill those agents," he said.

CrowdStrike is seeing growing demand for its security tools as businesses adopt AI. Kurtz pointed to CrowdStrike's partnership with Anthropic to protect its Claude Cowork product: He said enterprise customers had pushed for CrowdStrike's technology to be integrated before they deployed Anthropic's offerings.

"Our customers went to Anthropic and said, 'We need CrowdStrike before we can deploy AI,'" Kurtz said. "I think it says volumes that customers would not roll out AI without CrowdStrike."

Shares of CrowdStrike closed at a record high of $278.86 on Oct. 6 but have since fallen about 12% as tech stocks struggled in October and into November.