Enterprise Weekly #525: Palo Alto Pays Up, Importance of Identity Security, and More
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What a week it’s been! On Wednesday, Palo Alto Networks announced their intent to acquire identity security company CyberArk for $25B. This is the largest acquisition the security giant has made to date— the last (and only other) time Palo Alto has acquired a private company for more than $1B was in 2020, when they acquired attack surface management player Expanse for $1.25B.
This is a big deal. For one, it demonstrates the platform approach Palo Alto has taken: originally a pure play network security company, they've expanded into other areas of the security stack through acquisition and integration. They built Cortex, their endpoint competitor with an emphasis on SOC automation and XDR (extended detection and response) via acquisitions of SecDo and Demisto, and their cloud platform Prisma emerged thanks to acquisitions like Evident, Redlock, and Twistlock. The only area in which they’ve historically been quiet? Identity.
This is especially important because Palo Alto Networks has its eye on AI and agents. Before this announcement, Palo Alto Networks had already started to kickoff its AI security portfolio with the acquisition of Protect AI. But what's bubbling up as a crucial element for AI and agent security going forward is identity and its role in managing nondeterministic non-human identities that are exploding in enterprise environments.
What could this mean for the rest of the ecosystem? It’s possible that we could see more consolidation given the synergistic nature of different security categories across cloud, endpoint, network, and identity. Could Crowdstrike buy Okta? Maybe Sailpoint? What chess moves might other incumbents make? Now that identity is seen as the bedrock to agent infrastructure, securing it is paramount and makes for a better together story.
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