The largest acquisition in its history: Palo Alto acquires cyber company from Petah Tikva

The Israeli cybersecurity company CyberArk was sold to the American cyber corporation Palo Alto Networks in a cash-and-stock deal estimated at $25 billion. This is the largest acquisition in the history of the acquiring company and one of the biggest deals ever carried out in Israeli tech.

The move highlights the importance of identity protection in the modern cyber world—especially in an era where ransomware threats, AI-driven attacks, and breaches of government networks are becoming more frequent and complex.

CyberArk was founded in 1999 by Israeli entrepreneurs Alon Kaplan and Dr. Oleg Kalinbakh. The company developed a unique technology for protecting privileged identities—accounts belonging to administrators, software, bots, or systems with sensitive access to organizational data.

The company is considered a global pioneer in the field known as Privileged Access Management. It offers solutions that enable organizations to manage, monitor, and control access to sensitive resources. CyberArk’s systems store passwords in encrypted digital vaults, monitor abnormal permission usage, respond in real time to breaches, and provide automated mechanisms for temporary authorizations—including for automated processes and machines.

CyberArk’s uniqueness lies in its focus not only on external protection but also on internal defenses. It safeguards the heart of the system—the organization’s most exposed keys—and protects them from misuse. It does this through cloud infrastructure, hybrid work environments, APIs, and other complex systems.

The sum for which CyberArk was acquired is significantly higher than most previous cyber deals, including Google’s earlier acquisition this year of Israeli company Wiz for approximately $32 billion. But unlike younger start-ups, CyberArk is a veteran company with thousands of customers and mature infrastructure.

Over the past decade, it has established itself as one of the world’s leading enterprise cybersecurity companies. Its clients include central banks, insurance companies, intelligence agencies, government bodies, and global corporations. It was traded on Nasdaq, and its development center remained in Israel.

In recent years—especially with the rise of artificial intelligence—there has been a growing need for solutions that identify who is interacting with whom, what service is being accessed, how authorization is granted, and whether there are signs of digital identity misuse. Network protection alone is no longer enough. In the age of cloud and AI, identity is the new line of defense.

According to Palo Alto CEO Nikesh Arora, the acquisition aims to create the most secure and comprehensive cybersecurity platform in the world. The company already offers network, cloud, and endpoint security solutions but needed to add a critical security layer: Identity protection.

Recent cyberattacks—including one this month that affected over a hundred entities through Microsoft SharePoint servers—demonstrated how easy it is to infiltrate an organization by stealing internal credentials. CyberArk provides that layer—along with reputation, customers, technology, and trust.

The acquisition puts Israel back on the global map as a cybersecurity powerhouse. It marks a new peak in a wave of acquisitions made in Israel in recent years by international companies and underscores the value of Israeli innovation in the most foundational layer of cybersecurity.