(Note: this topic is background for a panel that I’m participating on June 20th at the Cloud Identity Summit, in Chicago, Illinois. I wrote this in hopes of informing some of the context around the panel, though I’m sure it will be revisited in some respect during our session.)
Knock, Knock: Identity is here. Identity Who? Exactly.
Tuesday, June 20th, 4:20pm, Chicago Ballroom IX
The genesis for this panel took place during dinner following the Ping Identify conference in New York. Rob Davis from TIAA & I were talking about some of our challenges in deploying identity solutions, especially ones where customer, stakeholder, or developer engagement are required. In other words, pretty much everything except directory synchronization. Even governance solutions, like certification or privileged access management, that had the benefit of the ‘stick’ approach to service adoption; seemed to lag in engagement even when doing so wasn’t necessarily voluntary. You could lead the horse to water (you knew there would be a horse analogy, right?), but you couldn’t make them drink.
The simple reality was, this is no ‘Field of Dreams’. We built it, but they didn’t come to participate. Password recovery and management solutions are probably the easiest one to point to as an example of this failure. Nearly every enterprise worth their salt has deployed a password management and recovery product and yet password recovery is perpetually listed as the number one reason users call the help desk!
Rob & I both agreed that this would be an excellent subject for a talk at CIS. So I commenced finding the right people that could both explain their own challenges in this space and hopefully offer up solutions that might help others, including myself, succeed in the future. Between Rob & I, we had both financial services and healthcare/life sciences covered, but I wanted diversity of perspective. Through some networking, I think we put together a really great breadth of knowledge and experience across many industries. In addition to yours truly, we also have:
Bernard Diwakar – Security & IAM Architect at Intuit
Frank Villavicencio – CPO, Security Management Services at ADP
Steve Hutchinson – Principal Identity Architect at GE
And finally, no panel is successful without an awesome moderator, so naturally I asked Ian Glazer of Salesforce, Kantara, & IDESG if he’d do the honors in spite of his incredible schedule at the conference. Some promise of bourbon may have been part of the exchange, but in the end I think we’ve got a killer lineup of identity pros that will share their wit, wisdom, and experience on this important subject.
But wait! Part of what will make this a successful session is great questions and shared experiences from the audience. So bring your own stories and let’s make this a conversation!
Unfortunately, the scheduling gods put Rob’s talk against the panel, so we had to go to the bullpen. See you in Chicago! If you can’t make it, follow the action using #CloudIDSummit tag on Twitter.