Delinea has officially completed its acquisition of StrongDM, strengthening its position in securing both human and machine identities as enterprises accelerate adoption of agentic AI and automation. The deal brings together Delinea’s enterprise Privileged Access Management (PAM) capabilities with StrongDM’s just‑in‑time (JIT) runtime authorization, creating what the company calls a unified approach to enforcing least‑privilege access in AI‑driven environments.
As organizations scale autonomous non‑human identities (NHIs) across hybrid and cloud‑native systems, traditional credential-based privilege models are proving insufficient. The combined platform aims to solve this by continuously discovering identities, minimizing persistent credentials, and authorizing privileged actions only at the moment they occur making Zero Standing Privilege (ZSP) operationally achievable.
“Security teams have historically had to balance strong identity governance with developer and operational speed,” Gilliland said. “By bringing StrongDM’s runtime authorization capabilities to the Delinea Platform, we’re empowering rapid and secure AI adoption for our customers.”
“Standing privileges are one of the biggest risks in AI‑driven enterprises, and unifying PAM with runtime authorization is critical to eliminating them,” said Art Gilliland, CEO, Delinea.
The integrated platform merges enterprise PAM, runtime authorization, and Delinea Iris AI for real-time policy evaluation across databases, infrastructure, containers, and CI/CD environments. It provides centralized visibility, auditing, and enforcement for actions initiated by both humans and AI agents.
Industry analysts say the acquisition addresses a critical gap.
“The rise of agentic AI exposes the limits of static privilege models,” noted Emanuel Figueroa, Senior Research Analyst at IDC. “StrongDM’s JIT capabilities give organizations the ability to extend Zero Trust to the precise moment of privileged action.”
Customers see strategic value as well. Raghu Valipireddy, SVP and CISO at Axos Financial, said the combined platform will enhance continuous governance and support the company’s AI initiatives by accelerating its journey toward ZSP.
