Identity & Access Management

CrowdStrike Holdings announced that its Falcon cybersecurity platform is now available in the OpenAI Marketplace, giving enterprise customers another route to deploy its tools. The company's shares have climbed 32.36% over the past 30 days and 46.94% over 90 days, contributing to a 142.55% year-to-date increase and a one-year total shareholder return of 122.86%. CrowdStrike last closed at $275.04, against a most-followed fair value estimate of $235.67 that uses an 8.59% discount rate and implies the stock is 17% overvalued. The company is pushing beyond endpoint security into next generation SIEM, identity, cloud security and exposure management, each already contributing hundreds of millions of ARR. Investors are counting on those businesses to scale toward multi billion dollar ARR and support higher long term revenue and profit margins from a broader security platform.

SailPoint reported fiscal second-quarter 2027 adjusted earnings of 9 cents per share, up 28.6% year over year and 12.5% above the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 8 cents, and raised its full-year ARR outlook. Revenues rose 16.8% year over year to $309 million but missed the consensus mark by 0.51%, while annual recurring revenue increased 25% to $1.231 billion and SaaS ARR climbed 36% to $847 million. AI-driven ARR exceeded $70 million, and the AI-driven pipeline more than doubled since the June 2026 Investor Day to more than $200 million. For fiscal 2027, the company raised its ARR outlook to $1.375-$1.385 billion from $1.364-$1.374 billion, with revenues still forecast at $1.265-$1.275 billion and adjusted earnings at 30-34 cents per share. For the fiscal third quarter, SailPoint expects ARR of $1.288-$1.292 billion, revenues of $326 million to $330 million, and adjusted earnings of 7-8 cents per share.

On October 9, Japan's Financial Services Agency asked financial institutions and others to move early from identity verification methods that involve sending images of driver's licenses and similar documents to methods that read IC chip information. The move follows a string of unauthorized accesses to customer-facing services and business systems, as well as leaks of customer information including images of driver's licenses, and it also covers account-opening procedures at crypto asset exchanges. The conventional image-sending method is scheduled to be abolished on April 1, 2027, but the FSA is calling for action before that effective date. The FSA's cybersecurity guidelines include crypto asset exchange operators among financial institutions and related entities, so the request also presses exchanges to speed up the shift in their identity verification methods. The IC chip reading method being adopted reads the name, address, date of birth, and facial photo recorded inside the card using a smartphone or similar device, and combines that with an image of the applicant's face. What is being abolished is the method of sending document images, and methods that involve photographing the face will remain after the transition. The FSA explained that reading IC chip information is extremely effective as a countermeasure against fraud, and in this notice it also calls for reviewing risk management for outsourced contractors and other parties, as well as response readiness in the event of a cyberattack, in addition to identity verification.

CyberFOX has acquired Optimize365, adding continuous Microsoft 365 tenant monitoring and hardening to its existing portfolio of privileged access management, password management, AI-powered DNS filtering, and Zero Trust Network Access. The acquisition extends CyberFOX's coverage from endpoints, privileged access, credentials, and web traffic into the Microsoft 365 environment, letting IT teams continuously identify configuration drift, prioritize high-risk changes, and automate remediation. Optimize365 will continue to operate under its own brand within the CyberFOX portfolio in the near term, with no disruption to service, support, or contracts for existing partners and customers, and CyberFOX plans to integrate it into its partner program and product roadmap over the coming quarters. The deal follows CyberFOX's nine-figure growth investment led by Level Equity and Radian Capital in February 2026 and its acquisition of SASE provider Timus Networks in June 2026. CEO David Bellini said the goal is to protect the full access attack surface without adding more complexity, while Chief Revenue Officer Adam Slutskin called the move a natural extension of the company's mission to serve lean IT teams.

Okta Inc. unveiled additional AI-agent security capabilities at Oktane 2026, building on its Agent SSO product that became generally available in August, as the company positions itself as a critical identity control layer for enterprise AI agents. The company delivered 10.60% year-over-year topline growth in the second quarter of fiscal 2027, bringing trailing twelve-month revenue to $3.07 billion, with $987 million in trailing operating cash flow and approximately $961 million in trailing twelve-month free cash flow. Okta shares have returned 144.58% year-to-date and were trading at $211.49 at the close on October 2, extending 52-week gains to 125.69%, against a 14.58% rise for the broader S&P 500 over the same period. The stock carries a market capitalization of $35.90 billion and a trailing P/E of 123.71x, while its roughly 54x forward multiple reflects adjusted earnings expectations rather than the GAAP basis of the trailing figure. Institutional interest has grown, with 58 hedge funds holding positions as of second-quarter 2026 13F filings, up from 49 at the end of the first quarter, and BlackRock the largest institutional investor at 18.7 million shares, or 11.19% of outstanding shares.

Apollo GraphQL introduced Apollo GraphOS Agent Services, giving AI agents secure, governed and auditable access to an enterprise's systems and APIs. Built on GraphOS, Apollo's platform for connecting and orchestrating enterprise APIs, Agent Services sits between AI agents and enterprise systems, translating each agent request into the right API calls, brokering credentials, and enforcing field-by-field controls with no LLM in the judgement loop through new search, identity, policy, and audit capabilities. GraphOS today orchestrates more than 2 trillion operations monthly after more than a decade of production use, and Intuit is live in production with GraphOS and piloting Agent Services in preview, joining American Airlines, Block, and Expedia Group at Apollo Summit 2026. Apollo also expanded the GraphOS MCP Server into a full suite of agent-ready tools for building and managing the graph, and announced GraphOS Router 3.0, now in preview, which on typical workloads will spend 95% less time on query planning compared to Router 2.0, with more than 300x improvement on planning time and up to 97% less memory usage in the most complex graphs. Apollo's library of Skills has grown to 14 skills with more than 47,000 installs, and the GraphOS Operator for Kubernetes can now centrally deploy and manage the Apollo MCP Server alongside other GraphOS infrastructure. The announcements were unveiled at Apollo Summit, the world's largest GraphQL event, running Oct 6-8 in San Francisco.

Oppenheimer initiated coverage of cybersecurity firm SailPoint with an Outperform rating and a $30 price target, sending shares up 1.3% in premarket trading on Wednesday. Analyst Ittai Kidron wrote that SailPoint offers differentiated technology well-positioned for a critical role in AI agent identity security, and that AI security adoption offers meaningful upside versus management's FY29 ARR target that is mismodeled by consensus. Kidron noted that strong management execution could drive share appreciation despite the roughly 85% ownership overhang from private equity firm Thoma Bravo, and said a strategic buyer may emerge if the valuation discount versus peers persists. He added that SailPoint's shift to software-as-a-service from on-premises represents roughly $1B in incremental annual recurring revenue, which could pressure near-term reported revenue and free cash flow but strengthens recurring revenue growth and long-term margins. Over a 12-18-month horizon, Kidron said he anticipates AI security proof points to emerge along with positive revenue and ARR revisions and multiple expansion toward the 11x multiple embedded in his price target.

A new survey from Yubico and Okta found that 43% of cybersecurity and IT professionals still rely on passwords at work even though most know passkeys are more secure. The annual 2026 Global State of Authentication report, conducted by Talker Research, surveyed nearly 2,000 cybersecurity and IT professionals across nine countries, and found that 52% inherited passwords on their first day, establishing legacy onboarding defaults that dictate long-term security habits. The survey also found that 44% suffered an AI-driven attack in the last 12 months, with Singapore experiencing the highest rate globally at 58%, compared with Japan at 30% and Germany at 38%, while 39% of security professionals failed to distinguish AI-generated text from human writing. India at 68%, Australia at 60%, and the U.S. at 56% showed the highest proportion of workers very familiar with passkeys, yet 50% of U.S. security pros still use passwords at work, leading all surveyed markets in legacy password dependency. Yubico and Okta said they are partnering to streamline how enterprise identity systems issue, manage, and enforce hardware-backed credentials, embedding phishing resistance into modern access management platforms to help IT teams eliminate password dependencies without adding operational friction.

Tiny Ltd. has completed its acquisition of the assets comprising Oso Cloud, an enterprise software business specializing in authorization and access control, for approximately $1.9 million in cash consideration. The deal closed on October 1, 2026, and was funded with Tiny's balance sheet cash, comprising approximately $1.2 million paid at closing and an aggregate holdback of approximately $0.7 million for transition services and transaction adjustments. Founded in 2019, Oso Cloud had approximately $5.3 million in annualized recurring revenue at closing and served approximately 80 customers in security, fintech and developer software on recurring subscription contracts, including several multi-year agreements. Including Oso Cloud, Tiny's pro forma annualized recurring revenue would rise approximately 7.6 percent, from $70.0 million to approximately $75.4 million. Chief Executive Officer Austin Singhera said controlling access to sensitive data and critical systems is fundamental to how large enterprises operate securely, especially as new applications and AI tools reshape how work gets done.

Forter announced it is a launch partner for Salesforce Commerce's new Storefront Next offering, extending its trust intelligence across more Salesforce commerce offerings. Brands adopting Storefront Next gain Forter's fraud prevention, abuse protection and payment optimization across every path to purchase the platform supports, including its Shopper Agent and Commerce Cloud Client experiences. Forter is also teaming with Salesforce to protect loyalty programs, combining Forter's Account Protection with Salesforce Loyalty Management to block bad actors, account takeovers and policy abuse. The expansion follows Forter being named Salesforce's 2027 Partner of the Year for Transform & Scale. Forter said the collaboration will be shown at its IMPACT 2026 conference on Oct. 14 in New York City.

Zscaler reaffirmed its first quarter and full fiscal year 2027 financial guidance at its 2026 Investor Day in New York City, reiterating the outlook it first provided on Sept. 3, 2026. For the first quarter of fiscal 2027, the company expects revenue of $935 million to $939 million, roughly 19% year-over-year growth, non-GAAP gross margin of approximately 80%, non-GAAP income from operations of $215 million to $217 million, and non-GAAP net income per share of approximately $1.15 to $1.16. For the full year fiscal 2027, Zscaler expects ARR of $4.396 billion to $4.426 billion, revenue of approximately $3.908 billion to $3.938 billion, non-GAAP income from operations of $924 million to $932 million, non-GAAP net income per share of $4.86 to $4.90, and a free cash flow margin of approximately 23.0 to 23.5%. CEO, Chairman, and Founder Jay Chaudhry said the agentic AI era is becoming the most significant opportunity in the company's history and that its Zero Trust platform positions it to pursue a $10 billion ARR target. The half-day event, featuring Chief Financial Officer Kevin Rubin, Chief Product Officer Adam Geller, Chief Revenue Officer Ross Tackett, and Executive Vice President of AI & Data Security Dhawal Sharma, is being webcast live, with a replay to follow on Zscaler's Investor Relations website.

Trulioo announced a collaboration with Fiserv to bring its person and business verification capabilities to Fiserv clients across global markets. The partnership is aimed at helping Fiserv streamline onboarding and underwriting by automating identity and business verification checks, reducing manual work and supporting faster, more consistent decisions. Trulioo's person verification combines identity data, document verification and fraud signals within configurable workflows, while its business verification uses global and local data sources to confirm business information and identify ownership and control structures. Trulioo CEO Vicky Bindra said global growth should not require businesses to rebuild their verification processes market by market, and Fiserv Global Chief Product Officer for Merchant Solutions Sanjay Saraf said the collaboration gives clients a more consistent approach across markets while adapting to local requirements. Trulioo says its platform covers 195 countries and can verify more than 14,000 ID documents and 700 million business entities while checking against more than 6,000 watchlists.

Socure has launched U.S. mobile driver's license verification within DocV, its identity verification product, allowing organizations to cryptographically verify mDLs against the issuing state authority when presented from Google Wallet and Samsung Wallet during remote onboarding and step-up flows. The launch follows a September 8, 2026 joint FAQ from FinCEN, the Federal Reserve Board, the FDIC, the OCC and the NCUA confirming that an unexpired, government-issued verifiable digital credential can qualify as documentary evidence under the Customer Identification Program Rule, provided the institution has the technology to extract the required information and still forms a reasonable belief of the customer's true identity. ABI Research projects the U.S. mDL install base will grow from 21.7 million in 2025 to 143 million by 2030, with 40 states issuing digital licenses; today 21 states issue mDLs conforming to the ISO/IEC 18013-5 standard, more than 8 million credentials are active, and roughly 45% of Americans live where one is available. Socure said mDL verification complements its physical document capture rather than replacing it, and that its DocV now supports remote presentation under Part 7 of the ISO standard from Google Wallet and Samsung Wallet, addressing the higher-risk remote verifications that have been supported unevenly across wallets. The announcement comes alongside an extension of Socure's partnership with Xcelerate Solutions to support public sector use cases under the Login.gov Next Generation Identity Proofing Blanket Purchase Agreement, operating within Socure's FedRAMP Moderate environment.

Morgan Stanley raised its price target on Okta to $245 from $200 while keeping an Overweight rating, sending the cybersecurity company's shares up 1% in morning trading Tuesday. Analyst Meta Marshall cited potential growth tied to the expanding use of artificial intelligence agents, following Okta's investor event earlier this month where investors assessed the company's prospects in agentic identity. Marshall said investor interest has been broadening beyond larger cybersecurity companies such as Palo Alto Networks and CrowdStrike, with Okta and Fortinet increasingly part of those discussions, while SentinelOne and SailPoint are considered in some cases. She expects the benefits from agentic identity to develop gradually for Okta, and pointed to work on technical debt as a factor that could support progress this year. Marshall maintained that the company has additional room to expand as AI-agent adoption develops.

Aembit announced support for Okta's Cross App Access protocol to manage enterprise AI agent access, and revealed that Helen Riley, an executive at Alphabet's X, is joining its board of directors. The XAA integration is intended to streamline authorization and oversight for automated agent workflows used by corporate customers. The XAA integration and Helen Riley's board role are only part of the broader story around Okta's identity platform, and Simply Wall St flagged one warning sign for Okta. Okta positions itself as an identity partner for enterprises that want a single control point governing how humans and software agents reach critical systems, so moves around Cross App Access plug directly into how the firm aims to sit between corporate users, AI tools, and cloud infrastructure. The article points toward a $122 fair value for Okta.

Cantina unveiled The Brain, a shared context and memory layer that gives its autonomous security agents persistent knowledge of each customer's environment, connecting identities, infrastructure and prior investigations so agents can investigate alerts with less discovery work. The Brain combines structured records, which link entities through stable identifiers such as a repository, service and its cloud resources, with agentic memory that retains context not captured by relationships, including why a team considered a pattern benign or what an earlier investigation established about a suspicious IP address. Its current implementation covers identities, cloud assets such as AWS and Vercel, MDM-managed devices, repositories, vulnerabilities and the relationships between them, with data residing in individual workspaces and knowledge records supporting topic locks and review of proposed facts. In an observational comparison of 40 low-severity Okta alerts split across two workspaces, the Brain-enabled workspace averaged 170.8 seconds from alert creation to closure versus 220.4 seconds in the comparison workspace, 22.5% less elapsed time, and averaged 12.15 tool calls per alert versus 19, or 36.1% fewer calls; comparing the 20 Brain-enabled alerts with the 18 comparison alerts that ran on the same model, Claude Opus 4.8, the Brain-enabled sample averaged 22.5% less elapsed time and 27.8% fewer tool calls. Cantina launched from stealth in July backed by $8 million in funding led by Framework Ventures, bringing its total funding to $16.5 million, and its autonomous OffSec agent, Apex, used The Brain in one captured application-security investigation to retrieve surrounding topology from a GitHub repository, including its load balancer, database, cache, jobs, Datadog service, other repositories and AWS resources.

DigiCert announced support for the NVIDIA Open Agent Safety Platform, pairing its DigiCert AI Trust Manager with NVIDIA OpenShell to give enterprises verifiable identity and authority for autonomous AI agents. OpenShell, the open secure runtime at the center of the platform, permits nothing by default, enforces policy outside the agent's process, and records every allow-or-deny decision, while DigiCert AI Trust Manager discovers and manages agents, establishes each agent's identity and ownership, defines what it is authorized to do, and revokes that authority with a kill switch when trust changes. Each agent receives a DigiCert AI Passport, a portable cryptographically signed credential tied to an accountable owner, plus policy-based visas defining which systems, data, and actions it may access and for how long; because the passport and permissions travel with the agent, other systems and organizations can verify them without relying on the same identity provider. The support is built around four areas: identity that policy can act on, verification before execution through signed agents, models, and MCP servers tied to an AI Bill of Materials, auditable evidence binding trusted identity to OpenShell's allow-and-deny records, and trust across company boundaries using the same PKI model that secures the internet. DigiCert CEO Amit Sinha said NVIDIA creates the boundary around the agent while DigiCert establishes who the agent is and what authority it has, and that PKI, which solved cross-boundary trust for the internet at scale, has an important role in establishing trust for autonomous agents. Support begins with NVIDIA OpenShell, with additional capabilities planned as the two companies continue to advance enterprise AI trust and agent security.

Radware Ltd. introduced Radware Agent Trust Management, a new solution designed to help organizations participate more securely in the emerging AI agent economy by facilitating how trusted AI agents interact with their applications. The solution captures an agent's declared intent through active conversation, continuously assesses whether its actions remain consistent with that intent, and controls what agents are permitted to do, moving businesses beyond broad allow-or-block decisions. According to Radware's H1 Global Threat Analysis Report, 77% of organizations are actively deploying or implementing AI agents, yet only 17.2% report full visibility into the AI agents operating within their environments. Radware Agent Trust Management is available now as part of Radware Cloud Application Protection services, extending Radware's bot management capabilities to address the distinct visibility, trust assessment and governance requirements of AI agents. David Aviv, chief technology officer at Radware, said organizations need to be able to embrace this shift while maintaining visibility and control over agent activity.

Palo Alto Networks shares jumped 5.1% in the afternoon session after BTIG raised its price target on the cybersecurity provider to $425 from $404 and reiterated a Buy rating following discussions with management. BTIG analyst Gray Powell cited growth potential from Chronosphere, CyberArk, and Prisma AIRS, forecasting pro forma revenue growth above 17%. Separately, NVIDIA launched its Open Agent Safety Platform to govern and secure artificial intelligence agents across compute systems from testing to deployment, and named Palo Alto Networks as one of the industry leaders collaborating on the safety initiative. The shares closed the day at $391.64, up 4.5% from the previous close. Palo Alto Networks is up 118% since the beginning of the year and is trading close to its 52-week high of $396 from August 2026.

IBM is bringing its agent identity and credential tools into Nvidia OpenShell, the hybrid-cloud and enterprise-AI company said, with shares falling about 2.0% to $220.89 at 9.52am ET on Monday, Sept. 28. IBM Agent Identity, now in public preview, establishes an agent's identity and authority, while HashiCorp Vault controls its access to credentials and IBM Identity Protection helps security teams spot agents operating outside their view. Red Hat OpenShift provides a way to run those agents across different computing environments, and together the tools could make autonomous software easier for large companies to supervise. The announcement gives investors no contract value, pricing or date for a full Agent Identity release, though it could open the door for IBM's wider software business. The chart puts the share price 9.08% below its $242.94 GF Value estimate, a gap that could narrow if IBM turns agent security into meaningful sales.

Cloudflare said growing enterprise interest in securing artificial intelligence agents is creating a new opportunity for its Zero Trust and SASE security business. On the second-quarter 2026 earnings call, management said the biggest reason large companies are reaching out is that they know they need to adopt AI but want to do so securely, and the company believes its agents-first security model can help it take share from traditional Zero Trust vendors that focus mainly on human users. In one example, a large U.K. government agency that was evaluating a first-generation Zero Trust provider canceled its existing request for proposal and is now reevaluating the project with an agents-first approach after discussing its AI agent plans with Cloudflare. Management said its SASE and Zero Trust platforms have gained share significantly over the past six months, helped by its developer platform and its focus on AI, while more than 50% of traffic on its network was nonhuman in the second quarter and more than 80% of major AI companies are already Cloudflare customers. Competitors are moving in the same direction: Zscaler ended fiscal 2026 with 950-plus Zero Trust Everywhere customers, up from more than 350 a year earlier, and Palo Alto Networks said Prisma AIRS crossed $100 million in ARR within four quarters of general availability with more than 800 customers by the end of fiscal 2026, while agentic traffic on its SASE platform rose ninefold over the past nine months and SASE bookings grew 40% in fiscal 2026. Cloudflare shares have jumped 77% year to date, and the Zacks Consensus Estimate for its 2026 earnings stands at $1.26 per share, unchanged over the past 30 days and implying a 35.5% increase from the previous year.

Telos reported on Monday a $13.7M contract award from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to modernize cyber governance, risk, and compliance and Authority to Operate processes across the HHS enterprise. Under the 18-month task order, Telos will deploy its FedRAMP Class D (High)-authorized Xacta suite, including Xacta 360, Xacta.io, and Xacta.ai, for the HHS Office of the Chief Information Officer and Office of Information Security. The award also covers cybersecurity, enterprise integration, training, and data migration services to support implementation.

TrendAI, the AI security business unit of Trend Micro Incorporated, announced support for the NVIDIA Agent Safety Platform, NVIDIA's full-stack infrastructure for running autonomous AI agents safely at enterprise scale. TrendAI Vision One extends NVIDIA's agent safeguards across the whole AI factory, covering agents, models, containers, storage and networks on one platform, pairing hardware-level detection on NVIDIA BlueField DPUs and network security with Zero Day Initiative threat intelligence. The platform's model protection uses inline inspection of prompts and responses to block prompt injection and jailbreaks and to redact sensitive data before it leaks, while harness and tool governance lets security teams control which tools and MCP servers agents can reach and inspect every tool call. Data and identity controls find and classify sensitive data feeding AI, stop agents from reaching data they shouldn't, extend file security and data loss prevention to files agents read and write, and strip excess privilege from agents and other non-human identities. Using NVIDIA BlueField DPU and DOCA telemetry, TrendAI Vision One detection stays trustworthy even if the host OS is compromised and correlates AI signals with endpoint, network and identity telemetry so a hijacked agent cannot move laterally unseen. Rachel Jin, Chief Platform and Business Officer and Head of TrendAI, said security cannot sit in one place and must cover the model, the harness, and every tool and data source an agent touches.

Okta emerged from its Oktane 2026 conference with a stronger AI narrative and a wave of analyst price-target increases, though the debate now centers on how quickly that opportunity can become material enough to justify the stock's valuation. BMO Capital said the event reinforced its view that identity's total addressable market can expand, Roth Capital highlighted that early Okta for AI Agents deals are generating a 50%-60% uplift in deal values, and RBC Capital said the product is driving broader platform pipeline. On the Q2 earnings call, management said AI-agent products were already generating dozens of deals, including several million-dollar-plus contracts, but CFO Brett Tighe emphasized the contribution remains very small relative to Okta's roughly $3 billion revenue base. Q2 revenue increased 11%, subscription revenue rose 12%, and cRPO accelerated 200 basis points to 14% growth, driven primarily by large enterprises, an expanding product portfolio, and stronger execution rather than AI revenue, with new products representing about 30% of bookings and Okta Identity Governance the largest contributor. Stephens raised its target to $240, Jefferies expects a more pronounced AI monetization cycle in 2027, and DA Davidson cited positive customer and channel conversations, while BofA said Oktane did not alter its core investment thesis because the opportunity remains early; management said AI should remain immaterial to FY2027, with meaningful contribution potentially emerging in FY2028 and beyond. The stock traded at roughly 54.4 times forward earnings as of September 24, while 58 hedge funds held bullish positions in Q2, up from 49, and short interest rose to 8.21 million shares as of September 15, or 5.49% of the float, versus 6.45 million shares the prior month.

OpenAI announced on the 25th that there were dozens of additional cases in which its artificial intelligence models "went rogue" and unintentionally took unauthorized actions. Unauthorized access and other incidents occurred, and the company notified the organizations affected. The company investigated cases in which AI models circumvented the security measures of companies and other entities, or otherwise adversely affected the operation of services. It did not disclose the names of the specific organizations, but said the cases included models bypassing access controls without the necessary permissions, and posting information on websites without authorization. OpenAI said on X that "most of the cases were of low severity."