The robust M&A activity that characterized the cybersecurity market in 2025 looks set to continue in 2026, with CrowdStrike having reached an agreement to acquire identity management firm SGNL.

Founded in 2021 by former Google staff, SGNL developed a real-time access enforcement layer that sits between traditional identity providers and cloud resource layers used by both human and AI users. It continuously monitors user identity, device, and behavior, and can dynamically revoke access as conditions change, providing platform owners with real-time protection compared to standing privilege access.

“SGNL was founded to connect access decisions with business reality,” said Scott Kriz, CEO and co-founder of SGNL. “The world needs our technology to eradicate the significant risk that legacy standing privileges expose in today's and tomorrow’s environments.”

CrowdStrike has snapped up the Palo Alto, California-based startup to augment its Falcon platform with the addition of dynamic authorization. CrowdStrike said its flagship platform will provide platform intelligence and risk signals to help SGNL continuously evaluate access across software as a service (SaaS) and hyperscaler cloud access layers.

“AI agents operate with superhuman speed and access, making every agent a privileged identity that must be protected,” said George Kurtz, CEO and founder of CrowdStrike. “With SGNL, CrowdStrike will deliver continuous, real-time access control that eliminates the known and unknown gaps from legacy standing privileges.”

“Joining CrowdStrike provides us with global scale natively through cybersecurity’s leading platform to transform enterprise security with continuous identity, furthering CrowdStrike’s mission of stopping breaches,” added SGNL CEO Scott Kriz.

SGNL was formed by Kriz alongside CPO Erik Gustavson. The pair previously founded another cloud-based identity and access management platform, Bitium, which went on to be acquired by Google in 2017. They departed the search giant in 2021 to found a startup seeking to make smarter identity-first security.

Along with ex-Google staff, SGNL’s team consists of engineers and developers with prior experience at Okta and Microsoft, among other big names.

The firm has raised a total of $42 million in funding, most recently bringing in $30 million in a Series A round last February, according to Crunchbase figures. The likes of Brightmind Partners, Costanoa Ventures, and venture funds from Microsoft and Cisco counted among SGNL’s backers.

No exact fee was revealed in CrowdStrike’s announcement of the deal, though a Reuters report places the value at around $740 million – a far heftier fee than the $96 million it spent on the deal that brought CrowdStrike into the identity security market, when it snapped up Preempt Security back in 2020.

Identity management has gone on to become an incredibly lucrative part of CrowdStrike’s business, with the segment having generated more than $435 million in annual recurring revenue as of the second quarter of fiscal 2026.

The firm did confirm, however, that the deal for SGNL will be paid “predominantly in cash” and includes a portion to be delivered in the form of stock subject to vesting conditions.

The proposed acquisition is expected to close sometime in the first quarter of fiscal 2027.

M&A momentum in cybersecurity continues

M&A was a huge part of the cybersecurity space last year, and CrowdStrike’s purchase of SGNL shows that no signs of slowing on the horizon.

2025 saw Google splash the cash on cloud cybersecurity firm Wiz for $32 billion, while Palo Alto Networks sprung $20 billion for CyberArk. Other big money deals included ServiceNow’s $7.75 billion bid for asset security firm Armis and Mitsubishi Electric’s multi-million dollar deal for Nozomi Networks.

The splashing of the cash shows no signs of slowing, either. Alongside CrowdStrike’s latest deal, the first few weeks of 2026 have already seen Cisco reportedly move to acquire asset intelligence business Axonius for a whopping $2 billion, and Palo Alto Networks apparently in talks to buy Tel Aviv-based Koi Security for $400 million.

Just this week, Snowflake confirmed it’s set to acquire the observability platform Observe in a deal worth around $1 billion.