Delinea announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire StrongDM

As AI adoption accelerates and non-human identities (NHIs) continue to outnumber human users, enterprises must secure privileged access in real-time across increasingly diverse cloud-native, hybrid, and on-prem environments. StrongDM's JIT runtime authorization will extend the Delinea Platform powered by Iris AI to deliver a single, integrated policy, governance, and audit layer that enforces least privilege at the moment of action. This approach will support both ephemeral and credential-based access models while enabling a deliberate transition toward a zero standing privilege (ZSP) model that doesn't require enterprises of any size to abandon existing PAM investments or infrastructure.

Redefining identity security for continuous, always-on environments

The combination of Delinea and StrongDM reflects the evolution of traditional session-based PAM into a scalable, modern identity security control plane that governs privileged access across all human and NHIs through JIT runtime authorization. This approach enables continuous evaluation and response, which is particularly valuable for organizations delivering seamless access to cloud infrastructure, production databases, and automated CI/CD pipelines that developers demand while providing the compliance and control that security requires.

Together, the combined platform will deliver:

Frictionless, secure developer access to sensitive resources such as cloud infrastructure, databases, and containers, while enforcing least privilege in real time;

Reduced exposure to credential theft, phishing, and software supply chain attacks by minimizing persistent credentials;

AI governance and real-time control over autonomous agents through unified visibility, auditability, and continuous policy enforcement for privileged actions taken by machine and agentic AI identities; and

Stronger compliance and simplified operations via a single, centralized control plane for end-to-end privileged access policy, authorization, and audit across on-prem, cloud, and SaaS environments for all human and machine identities.

The combined platform will allow organizations to modernize identity security without forcing a rip-and-replace approach while enabling a progressive transition away from static privilege and credential-based access models. Together, Delinea and StrongDM will redefine identity security for enterprises where developers, machines, and AI agents all require privileged access without slowing the business down.

Piper Sandler served as financial advisor to Delinea. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory review, and is expected to close in Q1 2026. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Find out why top analyst firms, including Gartner, Forrester, Frost & Sullivan, KuppingerCole, and more, consistently recognize the Delinea Platform as a market leader for PAM and NHI management: https://delinea.com/strongdm