CyberArk has recently acquired Zilla, a Boston-based startup, as part of its strategy to integrate identity governance and administration (IGA) capabilities into its privilege access management (PAM) platform. The acquisition, valued at $165 million, has already been completed.

Zilla, a small IAG provider founded by Aveksa’s founder and CEO Deepak Taneja, reported $5 million in annual recurring revenue last year, with 40 employees and 125 customers. During CyberArk’s earnings call, CEO Matt Cohen highlighted Zilla’s “modern” IGA platform, stating that it was designed from scratch to address the complexities of today’s digital environments.

“Unlike traditional IGA systems, Zilla’s modern IGA SaaS platform is specifically designed to handle the explosion of staff applications, decentralized management, and identity-based security threats in today’s digital environments,” Cohen explained. “By leveraging AI-driven role management, Zilla automates identity, compliance, and provisioning processes, making governance easy, intuitive, and comprehensive for modern enterprises.”

Cohen noted that customers can deploy Zilla five times faster than traditional IGA offerings, resulting in a 60% reduction in service tickets.

“Legacy IGA systems are often slow to deploy, difficult to integrate, have limited compatibility with modern systems, and rely on manual processes,” Cohen said.

With the integration of Zilla into its platform, CyberArk will be able to manage entitlements, provisioning, and compliance, while also granting access and providing controls, according to Cohen.

“The integrated nature of our platform creates a more secure footprint across modern environments,” he said.

CyberArk, which reported annual revenues of over $1 billion for the first time last year, has been aggressively expanding its PAM and identity and access management (IAM) portfolio. Last year, the company acquired non-human identity provider Venafi for $1.6 billion.

Identity and Access Governance Is Vital

The announcement of CyberArk’s acquisition of Zilla came on the same day that SailPoint returned to the public markets, two years after being acquired by Thoma Bravo for $6.9 billion and taken private. Thoma Bravo spun out 60 million shares, raising an estimated $1.38 billion in the first major tech IPO of 2025.

SailPoint, the largest IGA provider, reported recurring revenues of $875 million in the fiscal year that ended Jan. 31, a 41% increase over the prior year. Although the company has not been profitable, SailPoint reported a net loss of $235.7 million in the first nine months of 2024, a 23.5% improvement over the previous year.

As CyberArk expands its IGA offerings, SailPoint has been moving into CyberArk’s space with its 2023 acquisition of PAM provider Osirium. In December, SailPoint acquired Imprivata’s IGA unit for $10.7 million, plus up to $7.4 million in earnouts.

Alex Bovee, CEO of ConductorOne, an IGA startup that offers an SaaS-based offering to compete with SailPoint and Zilla, believes that IGA has become an essential component of cybersecurity posture.

“The bull view on this is that every single security company recognizes that identity and identity governance are critical parts of the stack, which is why CyberArk made this investment,” Bovee said. “CyberArk is traditionally a privileged access management solution, but the future is these converged identity platforms.”