Palo Alto Networks folded CyberArk into a new platform called Idira on May 12, 2026. If you have spent the last few years working toward a CyberArk Defender or Sentry credential, or you are just starting to look into privileged access management as a career track, that name change alone probably raised a question the vendor’s own press materials never quite answer: what happens to the certification.<\/p>\n
The short version is that the brand moved faster than the exam catalog did. Pearson VUE still lists every CyberArk certification under the CyberArk name as of this writing, with the same exam codes candidates have been studying for years. But the platform underneath those exams, and the company that owns them, is not the same CyberArk it was in early 2025.<\/p>\n
Here is what genuinely changed, what did not, what the four certification levels actually cost and require, and whether it still makes sense to pursue one of these credentials now that Palo Alto Networks is running the show.<\/p>\n
Palo Alto Networks announced its intent to acquire CyberArk in mid 2025, a deal reported at roughly $25 billion, one of the largest acquisitions in identity security history. The deal closed in February 2026. For a few months afterward, CyberArk kept operating largely as its own brand under new ownership. That changed on May 12, 2026.<\/p>\n
Idira is not a cosmetic rename. Palo Alto Networks built it around a genuine architectural shift: a zero standing privilege model that replaces persistent access with access granted only at the moment it is needed, plus discovery and governance extended across human, machine, and AI agent identities. The company’s own launch materials cite a striking figure behind that push, machine and AI identities now outnumber human ones by 109 to 1 inside a typical enterprise, and 61% of privileged access requests are still fulfilled with standing access rather than granted on demand. Whatever you think of the branding, that is the actual problem Idira is trying to solve.<\/p>\n
Strip away the platform name and the practical changes to CyberArk’s certification path are narrower than the acquisition headlines suggest. The one change that affects every single candidate, regardless of which level you are pursuing, has nothing to do with Idira at all.<\/p>\n
As of November 1, 2025, three months before the Palo Alto Networks deal even closed, CyberArk discontinued online proctoring for its certification exams entirely. Every CyberArk certification exam, from Defender through Guardian, now requires booking a physical seat at a Pearson VUE test center. There is no remote-proctored option anymore, which is a meaningful change for candidates who previously tested from home. Reporting on the rebrand also indicates certification products have been reorganized internally under a group Palo Alto Networks calls Next-Generation Trust Security, though that is an internal org chart detail more than something a candidate will notice on exam day.<\/p>\n
Strip out the platform branding and three things have not moved at all for anyone currently studying:<\/p>\n
More notably, the exam names and codes themselves have not been renamed to Idira branding. CyberArk Defender PAM, CyberArk Sentry, and CyberArk Guardian are still exactly what they are called on the vendor’s own certification page, with exam codes like PAM-DEF, PAM-SEN, and GUARD unchanged. Given that the Idira platform only launched in May 2026, that packaging could still shift, so it is worth checking the current exam list before you register rather than assuming this article’s snapshot will hold indefinitely.<\/p>\n
CyberArk’s certification ladder runs four levels deep, and each one targets a genuinely different job function rather than just a harder version of the same test.<\/p>\n