Dmitri Alperovitch


Dmitri Alperovitch is a Russian-born American computer security industry executive. He is co-founder and former chief technology officer of CrowdStrike. In August 2011, as vice president of threat research at McAfee, he published Operation Shady RAT, a report on suspected Chinese intrusions into at least 72 organizations, including defense contractors, businesses worldwide, the United Nations and the International Olympic Committee. Alperovitch is a naturalized American citizen born in Russia who came to the United States in 1994 with his family.

Early life and education

Born in Moscow in the Russian S.F.S.R., a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, Alperovitch is a U.S. citizen. In 1994, his father was granted a visa to Canada, and a year later the family moved to Chattanooga. Alperovitch earned a B.S. in computer science in 2001, and a M.S. in information security in 2003, both from Georgia Institute of Technology. It was the school’s first graduate degree in information security.

Career

Alperovitch worked at a number of computer security startups in the late 1990s and early 2000s, including e-mail security startup CipherTrust, where he was one of the leading inventors of the TrustedSource reputation system. Upon acquisition of CipherTrust by Secure Computing in 2006, he led the research team and launched the Software-as-a-Service business for the company. Alperovitch took over as vice president of threat research at McAfee, when the company acquired Secure Computing in 2008.
In January 2010, he led the investigation into Operation Aurora, the Chinese intrusions into Google and two dozen other companies. Subsequently, he led the investigation of Night Dragon espionage operation of the Western multinational oil and gas companies, and traced them to Song Zhiyue, a Chinese national living in Heze City, Shandong Province.
In late 2011, along with entrepreneur George Kurtz and Gregg Marston, Dmitri Alperovitch co-founded and became the chief technology officer of CrowdStrike, a security technology company focused on helping enterprises and governments protect their intellectual property and secrets against cyberespionage and cybercrime.
In 2015, CapitalG, led a $100 million capital drive for CrowdStrike. The firm brought on board senior FBI executives, such as Shawn Henry, former executive assistant director of the FBI's Criminal, Cyber, Response and Services Branch, and Steve Chabinsky, former deputy assistant director of the FBI's Cyber Division. By May of 2017, CrowdStrike had received $256 million in funding from Warburg Pincus, Accel Partners, and Google Capital and its stock was valued at just under $1 billion.
Alperovitch was awarded the prestigious Federal 100 Award for his contributions to the U.S. federal information security and was recognized in 2013 and 2015 as one of Washingtonian 's Tech Titans for his accomplishments in the field of cybersecurity.
In August 2013, he was selected as one of MIT Technology Reviews Top 35 Innovators Under 35, an award previously won by Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Mark Zuckerberg.
In 2016, Politico Magazine featured him as one of "Politico 50" influential thinkers, doers, and visionaries transforming American politics.
In 2017, Fortune magazine listed Alperovitch in "40 Under 40" annual ranking of the most influential young people in business, along with Emmanuel Macron, Mark Zuckerberg, and Serena Williams.
He is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank and was named in December 2013 as one of Foreign Policys Top 100 Leading Global Thinkers, along with Angela Merkel, John Kerry, Ben Bernanke, and Jeff Bezos.
In February 2020, Alperovitch left CrowdStrike to launch a nonprofit focused on cybersecurity in a geopolitical context.