The combination of a fast-moving platform vendor like CrowdStrike and advanced security services will be critical for being able to protect customers in the coming era of AI-accelerated exploitation of vulnerabilities, executives from top CrowdStrike partners tell CRN.
The combination of a fast-moving platform vendor like CrowdStrike and advanced security services will be critical for being able to protect customers in the coming era of AI-accelerated exploitation of vulnerabilities, according to executives from top CrowdStrike partners.
Speaking with CRN this week at CrowdStrike’s Americas Partner Symposium 2026, the executives said that the cybersecurity giant is uniquely positioned to help customers keep up with the rapidly evolving AI-enhanced threat landscape.
[Related: CrowdStrike Providing Massive ‘Benefit’ To Partners With Access To Frontier AI Models: CTO]
For instance, CrowdStrike has proven itself to be savvy when it comes to acquiring and tightly integrating technologies from emerging startups, while also making it possible to easily roll out the new capabilities through its pioneering Falcon Flex subscription model, the executives said during the event in Miami Beach, Fla.
For solution providers such as New York-based Presidio, the message to customers—in the wake of disclosures about ultra-powerful AI models such as Anthropic’s Claude Mythos—is that customers should not feel like they have to handle this massive challenge on their own, Presidio executives told CRN.
“There’s all of this scary stuff. You’re an IT staff or a CISO. You have [a limited] number of people. You’re not going to figure this out,” said Jim Finn, vice president for cybersecurity sales at Presidio, No. 24 on CRN’s 2025 Solution Provider 500.
“Who do you think will? Who do you want as your front-end team, acquiring the right companies, building the right technology?” Finn said. “That’s the important point right now—to truly pick a platform for security, who you trust is going to keep plugging those holes. And then [customers should be] working with somebody like Presidio—where we can do the assessment services, we can get the enriched data to your preferred vendor, and we can keep you protected.”
The value of this platform approach also extends to leveraging the frontier AI models themselves—which CrowdStrike is doing through collaborations with Anthropic and OpenAI, as well as through its own Project QuiltWorks initiative.
In that regard, CrowdStrike is also making big strides to benefit partners through its access to the frontier models, which then carries through to partners via CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform, solution provider executives said.
“I think CrowdStrike has put itself in a pole position by adopting this approach and being flexible with the [AI] models,” said Mark Grassmann, national cybersecurity practice principal at Alchemy Technology Group, a Houston-based partner of CrowdStrike. “As a partner, that gives us confidence that they’re the right platform of choice to recommend and advise our customers around.”
What CrowdStrike is providing is a crucial security foundation that is flexible enough to deal with AI-accelerated cyber risk going forward, according to Bill Fryberger, principal and Americas cybersecurity advisory leader at EY.
“It just makes it easier for me to have a conversation with the client,” Fryberger said. “We’re just providing a flexible foundation where you can be comfortable that we’ll use the best we can at the time.”
Consolidation Push
Without a doubt, customers are recognizing that keeping pace with AI-driven threats will require a security platform that is designed to evolve continuously, solution and service provider executives said.
This approach also fits with the existing priorities around consolidating and rationalizing security tools, according to John Hurley, CRO at Denver-based Optiv, No. 28 on CRN’s Solution Provider 500.
“There’s no doubt that a platform gives them an advantage to be able to help a CISO who’s concerned not only with tool stack consolidation, but with making sure that the platform is updated on a regular basis,” Hurley said.
In many ways, the potential for a flood of new vulnerabilities discovered by AI tools is not so much as AI issue, he noted. Instead, it’s another reminder that organizations need to understand where their true exposure points are, Hurley said.
“Do you have the proper service capability, partner capability, toolset capability—so you understand that risk that you potentially have or don’t have?” he said.
Contracting Advantages
At Annapolis, Md.-based Blackwood, which specializes in serving federal agency customers, there are numerous contracting benefits to working with a platform like CrowdStrike as well, Blackwood executives told CRN.
Amid the “significant push toward platform right now” in the federal space, reductions in license count in some areas is leading to the money being reapplied to other CrowdStrike modules, said Ryan Morris, president at Blackwood, No. 93 on CRN’s 2025 Solution Provider 500.
“We see the benefit to the platform in terms of just the speed to the outcome you desire,” Morris said. “But from a contracting perspective in public sector, we’re also seeing it’s a lot easier to consolidate your spend with a platform security vendor—and be able to, in an agile manner, actually turn on, spin up and spin down the types of modules that you need.”
Power Of Partnership
CrowdStrike has undoubtedly proven to be committed to working closely with partners in response to the unprecedented challenges expected by the industry from increased AI-powered vulnerability discovery, solution and service provider executives said.
And that is exactly the right formula for meeting customer needs in security in the AI era, according to Connor McKenzie, chief strategy officer at Kansas City, Mo.-based Cyderes, No. 98 on CRN’s 2025 Solution Provider 500.
“When you come in unison—when you work off a similar sheet of music as partners—you simplify the buying process, you simplify the experience and the outcome,” McKenzie said.
“Customers right now have to deal with tens of thousands of vendors and prospective vendors,” he said. “How do you boil that down to maximum value in minimum time with the best possible outcome? You have to find a way to drill that down into a simpler form of engaging for outcomes. And that’s where these great partnerships work.”
For partners such as GuidePoint Security, which this week was named CrowdStrike’s Americas Partner of the Year, there’s no question that teaming with CrowdStrike on meeting the AI challenge to cyber defense will be pivotal going forward, according to GuidePoint’s Mark Thornberry.
“It is the next frontier of our growth with CrowdStrike,” said Thornberry, senior vice president for partnerships at Herndon, Va.-based GuidePoint, No. 37 on CRN’s 2025 Solution Provider 500. “We have built an incredible business together. It’s about as strong of a partnership as we have [today].”
Startup Mentality
The fact that CrowdStrike also remains nimble and founder-led, with co-founder George Kurtz continuing to lead the company as CEO, has given the vendor a rare startup mentality for a security vendor at its scale, partner executives said.
That also appears to have translated into a “preference for CrowdStrike” among startups that are looking to be acquired—with early stage founders appreciating the speed at which CrowdStrike is moving and the fact that the vendor “still has that founder energy and mojo to it,” according to Presidio’s Finn.
“I think it’s that George’s founder energy is still there,” he said, which is undoubtedly “a big advantage for them.”
All in all, “looking at the full market scape, I don’t know anybody else that is really close to the velocity of CrowdStrike from an acquisition perspective, from a go-to-market, from an integration [perspective],” Finn said.
The bottom line is that it’s “critically important—when you pick your partner and your platform—to [choose those] who will make the right investments and integrate properly,” said Justin Tibbs, vice president for cybersecurity at Presidio.
“CrowdStrike, to me, is the fastest and most complete at integrating their M&A and making very slick M&A decisions,” Tibbs said. “It makes the platform feel, for us, like a great accelerator.”
