CrowdStrike targets identity security gains with $740 million SGNL acquisition

Cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike has signed a definitive agreement to acquire SGNL, a California-based startup specializing in identity security.

The proposed acquisition has been pegged at around $740 million and is expected to close during CrowdStrike’s first quarter of FY2027, subject to customary closing conditions.

The move will see SGNL’s dynamic Continuous Identity privilege and access capabilities integrated into the vendor’s Falcon platform to enable access for human, non-human (NHI), and AI identities to be continuously granted and revoked based on real-time risk.

In an announcement, George Kurtz, CEO and co-founder of CrowdStrike, said the speed and access at which AI agents operate make them a privileged identity that must be protected.

“With SGNL, CrowdStrike will deliver continuous, real-time access control that eliminates the known and unknown gaps from legacy standing privileges,” he explained.

“We’re disrupting the premise of modern privilege and access – for every identity, human or machine. This is identity security built for the AI era.”

Enhanced identity security

CrowdStrike’s Falcon Next-Gen Identity Security offering is designed to secure the full hybrid identity lifecycle, unifying initial access prevention, privileged access management (PAM), identity threat detection and response (ITDR), SaaS identity security, and agentic identity protection.

SGNL operates as the runtime access enforcement layer between modern identity providers and the SaaS and hyperscaler resources. By integrating the technology into Falcon, SGNL will leverage the platform’s real-time intelligence and risk signals to continuously evaluate identity, device, and behaviour to control access as conditions change.

CrowdStrike said the addition of SGNL will eliminate standing privileges for humans, NHIs, and AI agents, as well as enable access enforcement across all major identity systems – extending Falcon Next-Gen Identity Security’s Just In Time access across major cloud identity and SaaS systems such as AWS IAM and Okta.

Continuous access evaluation protocol (CAEP)-driven driven enforcement will also be integrated into Falcon Fusion SOAR, adding the ability to revoke access beyond the identity provider to bolster protection against misconfiguration-driven breaches.

Additionally, SGNL will help unify hybrid identity security across on-premises, SaaS, and cloud environments, the vendor added.

Commenting on the company’s acquisition. SGNL’s CEO and co-founder, Scott Kriz, said the company was founded with the aim of connecting access decisions with ‘business reality’.

“The world needs our technology to eradicate the significant risk that legacy standing privileges expose in today and tomorrow’s environments,” he commented.

“Joining CrowdStrike provides us with global scale natively through cybersecurity’s leading platform to transform enterprise security with Continuous Identity, furthering CrowdStrike’s mission of stopping breaches.”

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