Shares of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike made big moves in the right direction Tuesday after the company announced a perfect score on an industry test for ransomware detection, protection, and accuracy.
The stock closed up 9.4% to around $409, making CrowdStrike the second-best performer in the S&P 500 Tuesday. The stock price is up nearly 20% this month. Royal Caribbean was the day's top performer, rising 12% on strong third-quarter earnings results.
Ransomware attacks, in which a company's computer systems are frozen unless it pays a ransom, has become a growing concern. Companies across the globe paid $1.1 billion to attackers in 2023 -- up from $220 million in 2019 -- according to a report from research firm Chainalysis. While some attacks are carried out by large syndicates, others are made by smaller groups or individuals, the report found.
The phenomenon of ransomware as a service, in which malware is provided to outsiders in exchange for a cut of any proceeds, has contributed to the increase by lowering the technical expertise needed to carry out an attack, the Chainalysis report found.
CrowdStrike stock is up more than a third over the past 52 weeks, having recovered from its 39% plunge last July after a defective software update led to widespread outages at airlines, banks, and other businesses. It was added to the S&P 500 in June.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500, and Nasdaq Composite all rose Tuesday, with the Nasdaq seeing the biggest gain of 2%. The tech heavy composite had fallen 3% Monday and the S&P 500 fell 1.5% during yesterday's DeepSeek AI rout.
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