Can Falcon for IT Help CrowdStrike Expand Beyond Cybersecurity?
CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. CRWD is already a leader in cybersecurity, but its latest push into IT operations through Falcon for IT could take the company further. Falcon for IT is a unified security and IT operations platform designed to streamline endpoint management, automate tasks, and enhance security posture.
The module, which is within the broader CrowdStrike Falcon platform, leverages AI and real-time insights to help organizations achieve better visibility, control, and faster response times across their IT environments. With more than 20 pre-built response actions, Falcon for IT's use cases extend beyond security investigations to include endpoint reporting, incident response, baseline enforcement and automated remediation.
The platform is already showing early signs of growing adoption. In the first quarter of fiscal 2026, management noted that Falcon for IT replaced a legacy endpoint management tool as part of a nine-figure Falcon Flex expansion with a Fortune 100 technology firm. This deal also included Falcon Identity Protection and Next-Gen Security Information and Event Management.
The Falcon platform currently has more than 30 modules, and the inclusion of Falcon for IT in a large Flex deal suggests that CrowdStrike's platform is extending its utility beyond core cybersecurity. By offering tools that handle security and IT operations on one platform, CrowdStrike simplifies the platform's usefulness, which helps it in grabbing new customers and retaining the existing ones. It also helps customers cut costs by reducing the number of separate tools they need to buy.
This highlights how CrowdStrike continues to strengthen its platform and reflects the company's growing role in adjacent IT domains and not just cybersecurity. Falcon for IT may pave the way for CrowdStrike to expand into IT environments, which were traditionally outside the reach of pure-play cybersecurity vendors.
How Competitors Fare Against CRWD
Zscaler ZS and Palo Alto Networks PANW are also evolving their platforms to meet enterprise security demands.
Zscaler continues to expand its Zero Trust Exchange platform. In the third quarter of fiscal 2025, Zscaler reported ARR of $2.9 billion, up 23% year over year. Zscaler's Zero Trust Everywhere, Data Security Everywhere, and Agentic Operations are becoming its main growth engine. Together, these innovative categories are approaching $1 billion in ARR and are growing faster than Zscaler's total ARR growth.
Palo Alto Networks is doubling down on its platformization strategy. In the third quarter of fiscal 2025, PANW closed more than 90 net new platform deals. Moreover, the number of customers platformized on Cortex was up nearly three times, reflecting strong momentum with Palo Alto Networks' Extended Security Intelligence and Automation Management or XSIAM security operation platform.
CRWD's Price Performance, Valuation and Estimates
Shares of CrowdStrike have gained 47.9% year to date compared with the Security industry's growth of 23.8%.
CRWD YTD Price Return Performance
From a valuation standpoint, CrowdStrike trades at a forward price-to-sales ratio of 23.73X, slightly higher than the industry's average of 14.91X.
CRWD Forward 12-Month P/S Ratio
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for CRWD's fiscal 2026 earnings implies a year-over-year decline of 10.94%, while for fiscal 2027 earnings implies year-over-year growth of 34.68%. The estimates for fiscal 2026 and 2027 have been revised upward in the past 30 days.
CrowdStrike currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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