Delinea to acquire StrongDM

SAN FRANCISCO — Delinea, a provider of solutions for securing human and machine identities through centralized authorization, has announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire StrongDM, a universal access management company.

Delinea said that its experience with enterprise privileged access management (PAM), combined with StrongDM’s just-in-time (JIT) runtime authorization capabilities and developer-first access model, will form a new class of identity security platform.

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 non-human identities (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, reduced exposure to credential theft, phishing, and software supply chain attacks, among other benefits.

“Stolen or lost credentials remain the number one cause of breaches, which makes identity the core control layer for modern security,” said Art Gilliland, CEO at Delinea. “This acquisition will accelerate our evolution toward modern, ephemeral access models typical of cloud and AI-centric environments, empowering organizations to secure NHIs with the same rigor applied to human access. We’re giving organizations the freedom to move faster without compromising security or control.”

Tim Prendergast, CEO at StrongDM, adds: “Access models designed for static infrastructure and human users simply don’t work in continuous cloud and AI-driven environments. By joining Delinea, we will deliver runtime authorization at enterprise scale, securing every privileged action through policy-based enforcement that stays invisible to developers and operators. This is identity security built for how modern enterprises actually run.”

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.