Palo Alto Networks is buying id safety firm CyberArk for $25 billion.
The deal marks Palo Alto Networks’ first main transfer into the id house as threats from AI-generated assaults and artificial identities improve.
The deal will combine CyberArk’s privileged entry administration instruments into Palo Alto’s AI-driven platforms, increasing safety to human, machine, and AI agent identities beneath a unified safety structure.
Palo Alto Networks introduced plans to amass CyberArk this week. The Massachusetts-based id safety firm agreed to be acquired for about $25 billion.
The deal will carry CyberArk’s privileged entry administration (PAM) and id safety know-how into Palo Alto Networks’ current AI-powered safety platforms, marking the California-based firm’s first entry into the id house. Combining the experience of the 2 organizations, Palo Alto Networks will lengthen id safety to all id sorts, together with human, machine, and autonomous AI brokers.
For CyberArk, the brand new backing will assist to determine itself as an id safety platform by driving higher mixed safety outcomes.
“Our market entry technique has all the time been to enter classes at their inflection level, and we imagine that second for Identification Safety is now,” stated Palo Alto Networks Chairman and CEO Nikesh Arora. “This technique has guided our evolution from a next-gen firewall firm right into a multi-platform cybersecurity chief. At the moment, the rise of AI and the explosion of machine identities have made it clear that the way forward for safety have to be constructed on the imaginative and prescient that each id requires the fitting stage of privilege controls, not the ‘IAM fallacy’. CyberArk is the definitive chief in Identification Safety with sturdy, foundational know-how that’s important for securing the AI period. Collectively, we’ll outline the subsequent chapter of cybersecurity.”
The deal comes at a time when id and safety are converging, particularly as gathering credentials for each human and machine identities similar to AI brokers begins to problem conventional safety frameworks. The mixing of CyberArk’s Identification Safety Platform with Palo Alto Networks will present a single answer to assist remove safety gaps; lengthen id administration to make sure the fitting stage of privilege controls is utilized to each id, which incorporates people, machines, and even brokers; and assist implement just-in-time entry and least privilege ideas to make sure that AI brokers are granted solely the permissions they want.
Palo Alto Networks was based in 2005 and has since offered greater than 70,000 organizations throughout the globe with options throughout community, cloud, and safety operations. The transaction has been permitted by the Boards of Administrators of each Palo Alto Networks and CyberArk, and is anticipated to shut within the second half of 2026.
This deal marks a notable shift in cybersecurity, because it indicators that id safety is now not an add-on, however it’s moderately a central piece of the way forward for menace prevention. As organizations rely extra on cloud infrastructure, machine-to-machine communication, and AI-driven operations, id needs to be entrance and middle. Palo Alto Networks’ transfer to combine CyberArk’s know-how doesn’t simply add one other product line, however as an alternative redefines cybersecurity structure round id as the brand new perimeter.
The transfer additionally comes at a time when banks are combating deepfake id photos at onboarding, struggling to differentiate artificial identities created by AI from actual photos, and going through strain to safe machine-to-machine communications. Every of those components spotlight the rising want for stronger id verification and privilege administration throughout each human and non-human customers.
Photograph by Brett Sayles
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