EY Ireland & CrowdStrike launch cyber resilience tie-up

EY Ireland has formed a strategic collaboration with CrowdStrike aimed at organisations in Ireland.

The two companies will combine EY Ireland's cyber, resilience, risk and managed services capabilities with CrowdStrike's Falcon platform to help organisations respond to cyber threats linked to artificial intelligence and broader digital adoption.

The partnership targets companies and public bodies facing a faster pace of attacks as AI tools become more common among both defenders and attackers. It also reflects growing pressure to keep critical services running while meeting board, regulatory and customer expectations.

The arrangement is intended to support clients as they adopt agentic AI and other connected technologies. CrowdStrike will focus on its AI-native Falcon platform, while EY Ireland will lead cyber transformation and resilience work.

Resilience focus

The collaboration is framed around operational resilience rather than prevention alone. That includes helping organisations identify emerging threats, improve security operations and maintain service continuity during disruption.

In Ireland, it is aimed at sectors with critical or regulated operations, including financial services, government, transport, healthcare and life sciences, energy and utilities, and technology and telecommunications. These industries face increasing scrutiny over their ability to withstand outages, cyber incidents and supply chain weaknesses.

Regulatory frameworks such as NIS2 and DORA form part of the backdrop, but the collaboration extends beyond compliance. The focus is on whether organisations can keep important services functioning under pressure, rather than simply maintain documented plans.

This approach aligns with EY Ireland's broader resilience strategy, which links the strength of individual organisations to the resilience of infrastructure, public services and the wider economy. The firm describes this as embedding resilience into the design and operation of services, platforms and business processes.

Puneet Kukreja, Partner, Resilient Nation Leader, EY Ireland, said: "Ireland is entering a defining phase in its resilience journey. AI is collapsing the time between vulnerability and impact, outpacing traditional defences and decision cycles. As organisations embrace AI and autonomous technologies, resilience needs to be built into operations, technology and decision-making from the outset. Together with CrowdStrike, we are helping organisations build intelligent, AI-enabled cyber resilience capabilities that operate at the speed of today's threats, protecting critical services, strengthening trust and enabling organisations to navigate the agentic era with confidence."

AI pressure

The tie-up comes as businesses and public sector bodies move more services to cloud-based and connected systems while experimenting with AI tools in daily operations. That shift can widen the attack surface and reduce the time available to respond when vulnerabilities are exploited.

Boards and senior executives increasingly view cyber resilience as a business continuity issue rather than a narrow technology concern. The growing use of third-party providers and interconnected systems has added to that challenge, especially in sectors where outages can disrupt essential services.

CrowdStrike said the partnership is intended to help organisations modernise security operations while reducing complexity. Ben Emslie, Vice President, Northern Europe, CrowdStrike, said: "As organisations accelerate AI adoption, they need trusted partners to help modernise security operations while staying ahead of increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. By combining the Falcon platform with EY Ireland's cyber and transformation expertise, organisations can eliminate complexity, strengthen security operations and stop breaches while securely adopting AI."

The collaboration also reflects a broader shift in how cyber resilience is measured. Organisations are increasingly judged on their ability to anticipate disruption, protect the services that matter most and make effective decisions during an incident.

Resilience now extends across technology, people, governance and operating models, as well as third-party dependencies. For organisations in Ireland's critical sectors, the test is less whether an attack can be prevented altogether and more whether essential operations can continue when disruption occurs.