Palo Alto Networks CEO hails ‘the end of identity silos’ as firm closes CyberArk acquisition

Palo Alto Networks has completed its $25 billion acquisition of CyberArk, aiming to fill the gaps in its current offerings by incorporating identity security.

According to Palo Alto Networks, the deal will enable it to secure every identity across the enterprise - human, machine, and agentic - by adding CyberArk's AI-powered Identity Security Platform to its portfolio.

The platform applies intelligent privilege controls to every identity, offering continuous threat prevention, detection and response across the identity lifecycle, with tools covering areas such as privileged access management (PAM), secure single sign-on (SSO), and multi-factor authentication (MFA).

Machine identities now outnumber human identities by more than 80 to one, the company noted, while three-quarters of organizations say their human identities are governed by outdated and overly permissive privilege models.

Attackers are increasingly exploiting identity weaknesses, making credential abuse and excessive privilege among the dominant threat vectors today. Nearly 90% of organizations have already suffered an identity-centric breach, research shows.

However, Palo Alto Networks said companies using identity-driven security controls can speed up their breach response by up to 80% by preventing attackers from abusing credentials and excessive access.

"The emerging wave of AI agents will require us to secure every identity — human, machine, and agent. This is why we moved decisively by announcing our intent to acquire CyberArk last July and am excited to have product integration begin," said Nikesh Arora, chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks.

"For our customers, this means the end of 'identity silos.' They can now manage privileged access across their entire hybrid cloud environment from the same company they trust for network security and security operations — to ensure they are secure in the AI era."

CyberArk integration beckons

CyberArk's Identity Security solutions will still be available as a standalone platform, but the two firms are working to integrate CyberArk's capabilities into the Palo Alto Networks security ecosystem.

There'll be no disruption for existing customers, the duo claimed.

"This is a win-win: our customers gain access to the world's most comprehensive security portfolio, and our employees join a global innovation engine," said Matt Cohen, CEO of CyberArk. "Together, we are creating the most robust combination of proven technologies to stop identity-driven breaches."

Under the terms of the agreement, CyberArk shareholders will receive $45.00 in cash and 2.2005 shares of Palo Alto Networks common stock for each CyberArk ordinary share.

Following the deal, Palo Alto Networks plans to pursue a secondary listing on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, adopting the "CYBR" ticker. It will continue to be listed on the NASDAQ Global Select Market, trading under the "PANW" ticker.

The closure of the CyberArk deal follows the completion last month of Palo Alto Networks’ $3.35 billion acquisition of Chronosphere, a cloud-native observability provider.

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