The world of enterprise cybersecurity is evolving faster than ever. While businesses are rapidly deploying cloud services, automating processes, and integrating artificial intelligence, one critical element of this transformation is coming to the forefront—identity. It defines the boundaries of trust in the digital environment, and increasingly, it is becoming the starting point of attacks.

This is not about weakened defenses. On the contrary, organizations are investing more in security than ever before. However, the number of digital identities is growing explosively: human accounts, services, APIs, workloads, and autonomous AI agents. All of them operate continuously, at machine speed, often with elevated privileges. In such an environment, identity becomes the primary attack surface of the modern enterprise.

Today, nearly every major security incident begins with credential compromise. Identity has become the dominant threat vector: over the past year, 87% of organizations experienced at least two identity-related incidents. The consequences include operational disruptions, regulatory penalties, direct financial losses, and long-term reputational damage.

It is in this context that a strategically important milestone takes place: CyberArk officially joins Palo Alto Networks. This is more than a corporate transaction—it reflects a shared vision: identity security must evolve from an add-on capability into a foundational layer of cybersecurity infrastructure.

When Access Becomes the New Perimeter

The traditional security model was built around the network. Today, the new perimeter is access.

Enterprises manage thousands of services, integrations, APIs, and autonomous agents. Machine identities already outnumber human identities many times over, operating continuously and faster than any manual audit can track. At the same time, privileged access models in many organizations remain excessive and outdated.

In such an environment, even a single unnecessary privilege can become an entry point for an attack. And the more complex the infrastructure becomes, the less visible these risks are. Fragmented tooling further amplifies the problem: risk accumulates silently until it materializes as an incident.

This challenge lies at the core of CyberArk’s expertise.

Continuity Instead of Periodic Control

In a world where new identities are created every second and permissions change dynamically with system scaling, periodic reviews are no longer sufficient. Security must be continuous, meaning:

• full real-time visibility into who—or what—has access to critical resources;
• dynamic privileges, where access is granted only when needed and automatically revoked afterward;
• governance that does not wait for audits but continuously enforces security policies.

CyberArk has been advancing this approach for decades. This is why its integration with Palo Alto Networks represents a natural continuation of this evolution.

Identity as a Platform Foundation

Within Palo Alto Networks, identity security becomes one of the core platform pillars.

The CyberArk Identity Security platform has proven its effectiveness in global enterprise environments. Its principle is simple yet radical: every identity is potentially privileged and must therefore be controlled.

This approach reduces the attack surface: excessive permissions are identified, unnecessary privileges are eliminated, and opportunities for lateral movement are significantly reduced.

Embedding identity security at the platform level enables deeper synchronization with network security, cloud protection, and incident response processes. Security is no longer a set of isolated tools but a unified, coordinated ecosystem.

Artificial Intelligence: A New Scale of Responsibility

The deployment of AI systems further amplifies the importance of this approach. Autonomous agents often require continuous access to data and infrastructure resources. Without proper control, such access becomes a critical vulnerability.

Most organizations still lack effective mechanisms to manage machine and AI-driven identities. As a result, excessive permissions and insufficient oversight are common.

Applying unified privileged access principles to every identity creates a trust foundation for innovation. Businesses can scale AI adoption without losing control or introducing hidden risks.

Practical Impact for Customers

For customers, this translates into tangible outcomes:

• clear visibility into risks across human, machine, and autonomous identities;
• significantly reduced attack success rates involving stolen credentials;
• simplified operational models through a unified, scalable control system.

Most importantly, it provides confidence—confidence to adopt cloud technologies, automation, and AI without losing control; confidence that security evolves with the business rather than reacting after incidents occur.

Next Steps

CyberArk Identity Security will continue to be available as a standalone platform, ensuring stability and predictability for customers. At the same time, integration of CyberArk’s key capabilities into the Palo Alto Networks security ecosystem is underway, focusing on resilience, simplicity, and measurable business impact.

The era of artificial intelligence is reshaping not only business but also the nature of cyber threats. Securing every identity is no longer optional—it is the foundation of modern cybersecurity.

The union of CyberArk and Palo Alto Networks represents a step toward a new security model, where identity becomes a strategic asset rather than a weak link. And it is on this foundation that a secure digital future will be built.