CyberArk to Acquire Venafi, Expand Machine Identity Security Capabilities

CyberArk plans to acquire Venafi from Thoma Bravo for an enterprise value of about $1.54 billion, saying it aims to create a unified platform for machine identity security at scale.

The acquisition will add Venafi’s machine identity management solutions to CyberArk’s identity security capabilities, the companies said in a Monday (May 20) press release.

Subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions, the transaction is expected to close in the second half, according to the release.

“Our integrated technologies, capabilities and expertise will address the needs of global enterprises and empower chief information security officers to defend against increasingly sophisticated attacks that leverage human and machine identities as part of the attack chain,” CyberArk CEO Matt Cohen said in the release.

The growing number of machine identities — including workloads, code, applications, IoT devices and containers — has created a vulnerability that can be exploited by cybercriminals, according to the release.

These machine identities need to be discovered, managed, secured and automated, the release said.

The combination of the capabilities of Venafi and CyberArk will help organizations protect against the misuse and compromise of machine identities, per the release.

“We believe CyberArk is a great partner for Venafi and that the scaled end-to-end machine identity security platform created by this strategic combination will deliver significant value to shareholders,” Chip Virnig, a partner at Thoma Bravo, said in the release.

Thoma Bravo announced a strategic growth investment in Venafi in December 2020, saying at the time that the deal valued the company at $1.15 billion.

The announcement of this deal comes at a time when 82% of eCommerce merchants say they experienced cyberattacks or data breaches in the last year, according to the report, “Fraud Management in Online Transactions,” a PYMNTS Intelligence and Nuvei collaboration.

The report also found that 41% of eCommerce merchants have begun enhancing their anti-fraud protections and another 54% plan to do so within the year.

In another recent development in this space, it was reported May 7 that cloud security startup Wiz was valued at $12 billion after raising $1 billion.

Wiz co-founder and CEO Assaf Rappaport told The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) at the time that the company expects this year to be a time of consolidation in the cybersecurity sector.