CyberArk defined the privileged-access-management category: vaulting, rotating, and brokering the credentials and secrets that hold the keys to everything else, extended over time into a full identity-security platform.
Red Education delivers CyberArk's official training track, with PAM administration courses running publicly across its Australasia, SAARC, and ASEAN schedules and available to the other regions on demand.
Founded in 1999 in Israel by Udi Mokady and Alon Cohen, CyberArk listed on NASDAQ in 2014 and became the reference vendor auditors name when they say privileged access. In February 2026 it became part of Palo Alto Networks in the largest security acquisition on record, a combination this site's Palo Alto Networks history page covers from the acquirer's side.
Founding stories
CyberArk
CyberArk began with a vault. Alon Cohen's digital-vault technology - an isolated, hardened store for the credentials nobody should ever email around - gave Udi Mokady the foundation for a company built on an unfashionable insight: the most dangerous account on any network is the administrator's. For a decade 'privileged access management' was a niche; then every major breach post-mortem started with a stolen privileged credential, and CyberArk found itself the defining vendor of a category the whole industry suddenly needed.
The timeline
- The digital vault
Founded in Israel around vault technology for secrets and privileged credentials - session isolation, credential rotation, and the audit trail for the accounts that can do anything.
- IPO: CYBR
CyberArk lists on Nasdaq as the privileged access management category's standard-bearer, riding the post-breach era in which stolen admin credentials headline every incident report.
- Secrets for machines
The Conjur acquisition extends the vault to DevOps: secrets management for applications, containers, and CI/CD pipelines - privilege was never only human.
- Identity beyond privilege
Idaptive (~$70 million) adds workforce access management and SSO, beginning the widening from PAM into a full identity security platform.
- Venafi: the machine identity bet
The ~$1.54 billion Venafi acquisition adds certificate and machine-identity management at scale - by now machines outnumber human identities many times over, and CyberArk moves to own both sides.
Announced May 2024; completed October 2024.
- The $25 billion exit
February 11, 2026: Palo Alto Networks completes its acquisition of CyberArk - $45.00 in cash plus 2.2005 PANW shares per share, roughly $25 billion, the largest deal in security industry history - making identity the third pillar of the Palo Alto platform beside network security and the SOC.
PAN 10-K FY2025 (terms); close per company announcements, Feb 11, 2026.
Flagship products and solutions
- Privileged Access ManagerThe flagship: vaulting, session isolation and recording, and rotation for the accounts that hold the keys.
- Secrets Manager (Conjur)Machine and application secrets for DevOps pipelines, containers, and cloud workloads.
- Venafi machine identityCertificate lifecycle and machine identity management - the 2024 acquisition's TLS-scale contribution.
- Identity Security PlatformThe umbrella spanning workforce access, endpoint privilege, and cloud entitlements - now being folded into Palo Alto's Cortex and Strata.
Key innovations
- Privileged access as a categoryCyberArk did not join the PAM market; it substantially was the PAM market, defining the vault-isolate-rotate-record pattern the analysts later drew the category around.
- Every identity, including machinesThe Conjur and Venafi arcs extended 'privilege' from admins to workloads and certificates - the framing Palo Alto paid $25 billion to own as AI agents multiply identities further.
Main markets
The reference vendor in privileged access and a leader across identity security - serving most of the world's largest enterprises - now operating inside Palo Alto Networks as its identity pillar since February 2026.
Analyst standing
- A perennial Leader of the privileged access management analyst evaluations from the category's first editions onward - the standing that framed the 2026 acquisition.
Red Education recognition
- Cybersecurity Excellence Awards 2025 - Best Cybersecurity Education Provider
- Cybersecurity Excellence Awards 2025 - Best Cybersecurity Certification Training
- Cybersecurity Excellence Awards 2025 - Cybersecurity Instructor Team of the Year
- 100,000+ students trained across 132 countries; 4.9-star average from 5,000+ reviews