3 Cybersecurity Stocks to Watch in 2026 as Identity and Endpoint Converge

Cybersecurity will be one of the most important sectors in the tech sector in 2026 and beyond. Increasingly, organizations realize that investing in cybersecurity is not a nice-to-have; it’s a mandatory line item on the balance sheet.

One reason for this is the advancement in artificial intelligence (AI). The threat matrix has expanded, and many cybersecurity companies are the ones with the AI tools to combat these threats.

When it comes to the nature of these threats, you’re likely to hear about endpoint and identity. This comes down to the “what” (endpoint) and the “who” (identity).

To clarify, endpoint security is about protecting devices that can be impacted by cyberattacks, both on-premises and off-premises. This includes computers, laptops, and mobile devices. Identity refers to who is using those devices.

As recently as five years ago, these were treated differently. But the emergence of remote work combined with AI is causing these two areas to converge. In simple terms, you cannot have one without the other; both the lock and the key must be verified. This has implications for investors. 

More organizations are looking to consolidate their cybersecurity platforms. That has been evident in some of the best-performing cybersecurity stocks over the past year. But investing is about where the market is going. Here is how the convergence of identity and endpoint impacts three popular cybersecurity stocks.

CrowdStrike: Pure Play on Endpoint–Identity Convergence

CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: CRWD) is one of the clearest ways to invest directly in the convergence of endpoint and identity. The company's AI-native Falcon platform started out as a best-in-class platform for endpoint detection and response.

However, today it embeds identity threat detection and protection into the same lightweight agent and data model. That gives CrowdStrike a structural advantage as enterprises look to consolidate point solutions into a single AI-native platform that can answer both “who” and “what” in real-time.

But at around 30x sales, CRWD stock is objectively overvalued. That shouldn’t discourage buy-and-hold investors as the stock is likely to grind higher given its expanding platform, high net retention, and strong free cash flow profile.

However, it may be a trickier trade. That said, active and nimble traders willing to take a long position may consider buying on pullbacks tied to macro or “spending pause” headlines, with an eye toward multi-year revenue growth reacceleration as identity and cloud modules gain share of wallet.

Palo Alto Networks: Full-Stack Security With Identity as a Signal

Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ: PANW) offers a broader, more diversified way to play the identity–endpoint convergence theme. The company brings together next-generation firewalls, the Cortex endpoint suite, and Prisma Cloud into a unified platform where identity becomes a critical signal across network, cloud, and device controls.

Rather than owning identity outright, Palo Alto uses its platformization strategy to integrate deeply with leading identity providers while using that data to power zero-trust network access, cloud entitlement management, and AI-driven analytics.

For investors, PANW stock trades at around 14x sales. That’s much more palatable, but the stock still has valuation concerns. Still, it’s a best-of-breed name that could be a core buy-and-hold stock for investors seeking scale, diversification, and operating leverage from security consolidation.

Traders could look at PANW stock as a buy-the-dip candidate around periods of multiple compression or guidance resets, especially when driven more by rotation than by any change to the long-term consolidation narrative.

Okta: Identity Control Plane Fighting Platform Gravity

Okta Inc. (NASDAQ: OKTA) is the more concentrated bet on identity in this convergence story. The stock surged in 2020 and 2021 as a primary source for single sign-on and multi-factor authentication.

However, as endpoint and identity converge, Okta is repositioning itself as an “identity security” player, adding identity threat detection, governance, and risk-based access on top of its core cloud directory. That makes Okta the neutral control plane in many environments, even as endpoint and cloud security vendors build or buy their own identity capabilities.

OKTA stock faces similar valuation concerns to CRWD stock. However, the stock doesn’t appear to be a buy-and-hold candidate until the company proves that this pivot shows up in execution and margin trends.

Aggressive investors might look to go long on weakness when sentiment prices in displacement risk from larger platforms. The thesis is that identity remains strategic and that Okta can defend its role through deeper security features and tight integrations with those same platform players.

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