CrowdStrike launches an AI agent “kill switch” and buys two security firms for about $495 million

CrowdStrike announced on Tuesday agreements to acquire artificial intelligence security startups Fiddler AI and Dreadnode, along with a new AI “kill switch” for its Falcon Guardian product, at its Fal.Con Europe event. According to The Wall Street Journal, the deals total about $495 million — roughly $400 million for Fiddler and $95 million for Dreadnode — although CrowdStrike did not disclose the amounts in its official announcements.

The AI Kill Switch lets security administrators stop agents acting outside their instructions through gateway controls, prevent them from relaunching and cut off their access to the company's network. The feature is available now, and every action is recorded in audit logs, the company said. Direct termination on employees' devices is planned for a later release.

Fiddler will bring monitoring and explainability to the Falcon platform: it will let companies trace agents' decisions, tool usage and behavior, and will be offered as Falcon Observe. Dreadnode, meanwhile, will add automated security testing before deployment, using more than 100 known attack strategies — including prompt injection and jailbreaks — to find weaknesses in models, applications and agents.

Both transactions, funded mostly in cash with a portion in stock, remain subject to customary closing conditions and are expected to close in fiscal fourth quarter 2027, when general availability of the new Falcon capabilities is also planned.

The announcement reflects a growing concern among businesses: as AI agents gain access to customer records and production systems, it is no longer enough to know whether the model is accurate — companies also need to watch what the agent does, test its failures before launch and stop it when it goes off course.

Photo: Archivo A Lo Claro

Source: TradingView / Stocktwits and ITMunch