Delinea has completed its acquisition of StrongDM, the universal access management company purpose-built for modern engineering, DevOps, and AI-driven environments.
As enterprises scale agentic AI and automation, privileged access is increasingly required by non-human identities (NHIs) that operate autonomously across hybrid and cloud-native environments, introducing risks that static, credential-based models were never designed to govern. By combining Delinea’s leadership in enterprise privileged access management (PAM) with StrongDM’s just-in-time (JIT) runtime authorisation, organisations can discover every identity, reduce risk where it matters, and enforce least-privilege access at the moment of action, making Zero Standing Privilege (ZSP) achievable in practice.
“Standing and hard-coded privileges remain one of the largest sources of risk in modern, AI-driven environments,” said Art Gilliland, CEO at Delinea. “Security teams have historically had to balance between strong identity governance policies and maintaining developer and operational speed. By bringing StrongDM’s runtime authorisation capabilities to the Delinea Platform, we’re empowering rapid and secure AI adoption for our customers.”
The combined Delinea and StrongDM platform brings together leading enterprise PAM and runtime authorisation into a unified identity security control plane powered by Delinea Iris AI, enabling real-time policy evaluation and governance of privileged actions taken by both human and non-human identities across modern infrastructure.
Together, Delinea and StrongDM deliver:
- Discovery and governance of privileged access for every human and non-human identity across infrastructure, databases, containers, and CI/CD pipelines
- Reduced exposure to credential theft, phishing, and software supply chain attacks by minimising persistent credentials
- Real-time governance of privileged actions taken by AI agents and other non-human identities through centralised visibility, auditability, and enforcement
“The rise of agentic AI and non-human identities is accelerating operational workflows to machine speed, exposing the limits of static privilege models,” said Emanuel Figueroa, Senior Research Analyst at IDC. “By incorporating StrongDM’s JIT runtime capabilities into the Delinea Platform, organisations can extend Zero Trust to the precise moment of action and advance toward ZSP across both traditional and cloud-native environments.”
Raghu Valipireddy, SVP and Chief Information Security Officer at Axos Financial, said: “I’m genuinely excited about the possibilities of a unified platform. Delinea has done an excellent job securing privileged access across traditional infrastructure for nearly a decade at Axos, while StrongDM solved just‑in‑time access in innovative ways for modern database and cloud environments. When Delinea articulated a vision to bring these capabilities together, it immediately resonated with how we operate and where we’re headed. The combined platform will significantly strengthen our security posture by enabling continuous discovery, governance, and real‑time enforcement of least‑privilege access across critical systems and data, which supports our AI initiatives and accelerates our move toward ZSP in alignment with business priorities.”
With this acquisition, Delinea establishes identity as the control plane for modern security, helping to ensure every privileged action taken by a human or machine identity is evaluated and authorised in real time, enabling organisations to eliminate standing privilege across AI-driven environments.
Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
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