SailPoint Buys Entro: Redefining Identity in the Age of AI Agents

AUSTIN, TX – June 29, 2026 – SailPoint, a leader in enterprise identity security, today finalized its acquisition of Tel Aviv-based Entro Security. While corporate acquisitions are common in the fast-moving tech sector, this move is far more than a simple line item on a quarterly report. It represents a significant strategic maneuver to confront a security challenge that has quietly grown to an existential scale: the ungoverned proliferation of non-human identities. In the emerging "agentic era," where autonomous AI agents and machine identities execute tasks, the very definition of a user has been rewritten, and SailPoint is betting that Entro's technology is the key to securing this new, autonomous workforce.

The New Battleground: Securing the Autonomous Workforce

For years, security professionals have focused on the human element—employees, contractors, and partners. But in the background, a silent population explosion has been underway. Research indicates that non-human identities (NHIs)—the API keys, service accounts, tokens, and certificates that power modern applications—already outnumber human employees by a factor of 45 to 1 in many enterprises. Some studies from early 2025 placed that number even higher, at 144 NHIs for every human employee, a figure that is accelerating with the adoption of generative AI.

This digital deluge creates a massive and largely invisible attack surface. Unlike human users, these NHIs operate without direct oversight, often with excessive permissions and no clear ownership. They are the phantom users in our systems, and their compromise is a leading cause of major breaches. Recent high-profile incidents, such as the breach at Dropbox, have been traced back to the compromise of a single machine credential, highlighting the catastrophic potential of this threat vector.

"Organizations are desperate for a way to manage the risk of the autonomous AI workforce," stated Mark McClain, CEO and Founder of SailPoint. His comment cuts to the heart of the issue. The problem is no longer just about stolen passwords; it's about "LLMjacking"—hijacking AI agents through their credentials—and other novel threats that traditional security tools were never designed to see, let alone stop. This is the AI governance gap that the acquisition aims to close.

A Tale of Two Maps: Unifying Breadth and Depth

The strategic brilliance of this acquisition lies in the complementary nature of the two companies' technologies. It's a classic case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. SailPoint's recently launched Agentic Fabric provides the crucial "breadth," creating a unified identity graph that connects human users to the entitlements, machines, and AI agents they are responsible for. It answers the vital question of "who owns this agent?"

Entro Security, meanwhile, provides the essential "depth." Its technology operates within the complex environments where developers live and work—CI/CD pipelines, codebases, and container registries. It acts as a high-powered microscope, discovering and securing over 1,200 types of granular secrets that are often buried and forgotten. More importantly, Entro introduces a highly specific lineage map indexed directly on secret and credential usage. This allows security teams to answer the critical operational question: "What application or script is using this exact secret right now?"

By combining SailPoint's governance workflows for human accountability with Entro's deep technical runtime security, the new offering promises a holistic solution. Entro’s innovative Non-Human Identity Detection and Response (NHIDR) technology actively monitors token behavior for anomalies, intercepts malicious AI tool calls, and even uses embedded Small Language Models (SLMs) to recommend real-time remediations. This isn't just a dashboard for telemetry; as McClain noted, it's a "real-time, unified control plane to govern, secure, and manage the lifecycle of every single identity."

The Consolidation Game: A Strategic Play in Cybersecurity M&A

SailPoint's move is also a telling indicator of a broader trend in the cybersecurity market: the race to consolidate capabilities and address emerging threats through strategic acquisition. Building a solution as specialized as Entro's from the ground up would take years, time that the market simply doesn't have given the speed of AI adoption. This acquisition echoes Cisco's recent purchase of Astrix Security, another player in the NHI space, signaling that industry giants are recognizing non-human identity security not as a niche, but as a foundational pillar of modern cybersecurity.

For a reported price tag around $200 million, SailPoint has not just acquired a product but has leapfrogged its own development cycle and potentially that of its competitors. It's a validation of the NHI market and a clear signal that legacy identity and access management (IAM) solutions that focus solely on human users are becoming obsolete. The acquisition strengthens SailPoint's position as an end-to-end identity security provider, moving it further away from being a point solution and closer to being an indispensable platform for the modern enterprise.

The integration of Entro’s co-founders, Itzik Alvas and Adam Cheriki, into SailPoint's technology organization ensures that the startup’s agile, problem-focused DNA will help shape the future of the platform. This fusion of enterprise scale with startup innovation is often the goal of such acquisitions, and its success will be a key factor in realizing the full potential of the deal.

From Governance to Active Defense: The Path Forward

Ultimately, the combination of SailPoint and Entro signals a fundamental shift in the philosophy of identity security. For too long, identity governance has been a reactive, compliance-driven exercise focused on periodic reviews and certifications. The new reality demands a proactive, real-time defense posture.

Itzik Alvas, Co-Founder and CEO of Entro, captured this shift perfectly, stating that the combined solution gives organizations "a single, comprehensive command center that actively governs human, machine, and agentic identities together, stopping credential abuse and posture drift in their tracks." This is the promise that resonated with Entro's impressive early customer base, which included firms like Booking.com, SolarWinds, and Elastic. These companies were already grappling with the pain of managing thousands of unmanaged secrets and found value in Entro's ability to provide immediate visibility and control.

By integrating this active defense capability into a comprehensive governance framework, SailPoint is aiming to transform identity from a point of vulnerability into a source of intelligent, autonomous security. The goal is to provide enterprises with the confidence to innovate and adopt new technologies like AI, knowing they have a system in place that can manage the associated identity risks in real-time. This acquisition is not the end of the story, but the beginning of a new chapter in how we secure the ever-expanding digital enterprise.