The 70th Edition of the Identity Jedi Newsletter

WHAT’S HAPPENING THIS WEEK

The culture of identity

I’ve had very interesting conversations with customers about building an identity program in the last couple of months. Most customers face the challenge of a decentralized business organization in which business units have full autonomy over their functions. And while this has lead to growth and value for the business, it’s become a headache for “centralized” centric ( try saying that three times fast) initiatives like identity or security. That’s not to say that identity has to be done in a centralized manner, but it does need a little sprinkle of central. You need visibility across the entire organization, regardless of the business unit.

So how do you accomplish this?

In my opinion, it starts with the culture. Getting the organization to understand that identity is more than just tickets and tasks; it is a secure way of delivering value to the business. To do that, you have to understand what identity means to an organization. Both internally and externally. You have to develop a team of people who not only want to learn identity but also how to teach it.

These aren’t things you can do overnight; no vendor can sell you this, and neither can an integrator. It’s something you have to build and nurture in your organization. The most successful identity programs I’ve seen all have that in common.

ConductorOne releases Access Fabric.

Exciting news is coming out of ConductorOne this week. Visibility is THE starting place when trying to build an IAM program. You can’t govern what you can’t see.

Ok, big deal, we’ve got directories and IAM systems that show us identities.

Well, that was step one. The next step is do you actually understand what you are looking at. Do you understand the context behind the identities and their entitlements?

Said differently, do you understand the relationships?

Well from the looks of it, ConductorOne is helping organizations do just that. AND I LOVE IT!

THIS is the direction we need more identity companies moving to. ( Shout out to RadiantLogic as well, as they have a similar concept).

Helping customers understand and visualize the context around identity is so critical to where we are in today’s environments.

Full disclosure: I haven’t seen or tested this functionality so I don’t know it’s limits. It’s the direction I’m excited about, more than anything else.

What are your thoughts?

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