SailPoint Buys Imprivata IGA Assets to Boost Healthcare

SailPoint plans to purchase Imprivata’s identity governance business to bring identity security and enterprise access management together for healthcare organizations.

See Also: Core Elements of Modern Workforce Identity Security

The Austin, Texas-based company said the deal will help SailPoint address healthcare security needs in Europe and Asia-Pacific and bring more capabilities to existing Imprivata customers around safeguarding machine identities and non-human entities. SailPoint President Matt Mills said the firm will extend its skills around artificial intelligence and unified data models to address growing enterprise complexity (see: Facing the Complexity of Unified Identity, Third-Party Risk).

“If you’re one of their customers or a potential prospect, you’ll be able to have a best-in-class identity governance solution that handles a lot of complexity, and do it at scale, and have it be closely and seamlessly integrated into their enterprise access management solution,” Mills told Information Security Media Group. “I think that’s a really big thing for their existing customers, but also their new prospects.”

How Imprivata Customers Will Migrate to SailPoint

Mills said existing Imprivata identity governance clients will have three years to migrate to SailPoint’s identity security cloud. Both SailPoint and Imprivata are owned by Thoma Bravo, which Mills said will help ensure continuity for customers. The deal strengthens SailPoint’s position in healthcare, which Mills said demands specialized solutions due to the regulatory environment and operational complexities.

“The people that were supporting these customers at Imprivata are now supporting these customers here with us at SailPoint,” Mills said. “And then, based on that, we’ll start working with them to see where they’re at in their journey. Some of them, I guess, we’ll move relatively quick and soon. Others, probably not. Others we will need to work with.”

The technical and service teams from Imprivata will integrate into SailPoint’s operations. The company plans to engage clients individually to assess their readiness and tailor the migration process to their specific needs. The healthcare space presents unique issues, including managing identity complexity, ensuring regulatory compliance, and supporting diverse access needs for clinicians and administrators.

“Healthcare companies are no different than anybody else,” Mills said. “They’re having to deal with, ‘How do we now integrate with those traditional cybersecurity platforms like CrowdStrike, Palo Alto, and Zscaler to be able to secure our enterprise?’ So, we take a traditional firewall solution and integrate it with modern-day identity security.”

By unifying data and incorporating AI, Mills said SailPoint aims to address the growing complexity of identity governance for large healthcare organizations. This includes building on existing integrations with platforms like Epic. SailPoint’s Atlas platform aggregates data across silos, helping healthcare organizations to manage hundreds of applications efficiently while maintaining security and compliance.

“Data that might have existed in silos before, now it’s all aggregated into a unified data model,” Mills said. “I think all of these things make this next-generation identity security platform paramount to long-term success for large, complex organizations. It’s going to be hard to have long-term success without some type of solution that’s able to handle all of this through AI and through a unified data platform.”

How Imprivata Deal Will Fuel SailPoint’s Global Expansion

While the U.S. remains the most advanced in adopting identity governance, European healthcare firms are rapidly catching up in terms of complexity and sophistication. SailPoint wants to use Imprivata’s existing global footprint to develop tailored solutions for regional markets, Mills said. In APAC, where identity governance is less developed, the goal is to prepare for scaling up as the region’s needs evolve.

“In Europe, we don’t see that much difference in terms of what they expect and what they need from a security perspective as we do here in the U.S., which has always been our most sophisticated region,” Mills said.

The healthcare industry’s growing complexity demands advanced solutions that go beyond traditional identity governance, and Mills said SailPoint’s platform safeguards non-human entities like bots and RPA tools. Mills said SailPoint aims to streamline the IGA implementation process. The company wants to expand its product portfolio to include machine identity and non-employee risk management, Mills said.

“We’ve rolled out new products around machine identity and non-employee risk management,” Mills said. “These hospitals have a lot of those kind of needs in terms of contractors. Then you get into all this stuff that everybody’s going to be getting into around bots and RPAs and non-human kinds of identities.”

The Imprivata acquisition is SailPoint’s third deal since being taken private by Thoma Bravo in August 2022 for $6.9 billion, with the company buying privileged access management vendor Osirium for $8.3 million and third-party identity risk startup SecZetta. Mills said SailPoint evaluates potential acquisition targets based on factors such as time to market, customer demand, and alignment with the company’s long-term goals (see: SailPoint to Buy Privileged Access Vendor Osirium for $8.3M).

“If something comes up that we think is a valuable asset that will help our customers get us to the market quicker, that’s something that we would consider,” Mills said. “We would consider it today. We considered it yesterday, and we would probably use the same methodology going forward.”